


Feeling Human

by airshipmechanic, keycchan



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Canon-Typical Violence, Cyberpunk, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airshipmechanic/pseuds/airshipmechanic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/keycchan/pseuds/keycchan
Summary: Crime, murder, love, and dumplings in a future city at the bottom of the ocean. Come for the cybernetically enhanced cowboys, stay for the longing gazes and questionable life choices. Part of the 2019 Magnificent Seven Reverse Big Bang, inspired by keycchan's kickass art.





	Feeling Human

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to: keycchan, my incredible artist and partner in crime for this endeavor, who dutifully read draft after draft and squealed about every little thing with me and contributed brilliant ideas and work far beyond just her beautiful art. 
> 
> Special thanks also to: lazaefair, who kindly edited this monstrosity and did a fabulous job at it!

Mariana was a city on amphetamines. It ran twenty-four hours a day at a speed that plastered you to the back of your seat and could just as easily break your neck. The city whirled with activity - electric zipper bikes flying through streets in three dimensions, flashing screens featuring advertisements and pop idols, performance artists spinning holographic fireworks in their hands, tech hawkers selling knockoffs of high-end cybernetics - and it never stopped. It lurked at the bottom of the sea with the angler fish, shining a light into the darkness of the depths to attract new prey to its snapping maw. As an urban evolution strategy, it worked: people came from all over the globe to join the never-ending race of tech, art, and business that flourished at the bottom of the trench. Most of them got chewed up and swallowed, bones spit back out into the dark, salty water.

Those who survived came in two types: the ones who made Mariana’s beckoning light shine even brighter, and the ones who lurked in the shadows around it to pick up scraps. At the top of the giant bathysphere that kept Mariana pressurized, warm, and livable, the wealthy walked through artificial sunlight and ate imported beef at the Imperial Hotel. At the bottom you found the people who worked for them, legally or not, willingly or not. Bottom feeders, dwelling in tenements under the neon glow.

The denizens of Mariana’s low-income district called their neighborhood “The Phos” - short for Phosphorescent, named after the bioengineered lighting that kept the place livable at low cost. Biolights didn’t take much power, and if there was one thing people in the Phos didn’t have, it was power - electrical or political. This was the city’s underbelly, where black market deals were done and anything was available for the right price, and new folks either learned who was in charge and how to work with or around them, or they got their bodies shot out of an airlock as food for the fangtooth fishes.

It wasn’t all bad, though, for all its unsavory reputation. Not every person had a hidden agenda to knock somebody out and steal an implant for the black market, and not every establishment had a finger on the criminal pulse of the city. There were plenty of places in the Phos that were just what they were: restaurants, corner stores, and all the other little places that made a neighborhood. They were refreshing to be in - the kind of place where even the worst of criminals and the most powerful of business lords could go to for a break away from their daily masquerade.

Billy Rocks half-wished he could turn around and head to one of those places. Right now, actually. But one didn’t just turn down a summons in his line of work - not when the summons came from Shimazaki Keiko.

He arrived at the Sakura Kissaten precisely on time. There was no excuse for tardiness in a world where everyone over the age of six had a wristdrive that communicated with the universal coordinated cloud and the World Atomic Clock 10 times per second, Billy felt - and yet, no sign of Keiko and her bodyguards, which Billy recognized for the subtle display of power that it was.

He knew how things worked in the underground, all its unspoken rules, even if he’d been operating in it for a comparatively short amount of time; the Phos didn’t have any tech, drugs, or violence that Billy hadn’t come across growing up in the Kabukicho district of MegaTokyo. His fluency in Japanese, Korean, and English opened a lot of doors. Mostly criminal doors, but Billy had learned to be a certain amount of ruthless early in life. Ruthless, and smart.

Being smart included not being too bothered by a crime boss running a little late. Especially not the one who ran the Abyssals, arguably the most powerful criminal syndicate in Mariana. (The name came from either the shelf closer to the top of the Trench or from the depths of hell. It was anyone’s guess which one it was.)

So he had time to order a pot of hongcha and a strawberry napoleon, and download a volume of some trashy romance webtoon that he would deny any interest in if questioned. The tea house was owned by a Japanese couple, but like most of the rest of Mariana, it had collected cultural influences from all over. Billy could get his Korean romance comic, his Chinese tea, and his French pastry all from a Japanese language menu while waiting for his client to arrive; it was something he still managed to enjoy about this undersea city despite his recently changed fortunes.

He’d just put down the order when Keiko swept into the tea house, imperious as a diva commanding the stage. Iridescent threads of light in her leggings faded from red to blue to green and back as she strode forward, echoed in the glow of the wires woven through the skin on her left arm from her fingertips to her shoulder. Pretty work, Billy noted, and nothing to make it obvious at a glance if it was a functional cybernetic or purely decorative. He nodded to her in polite greeting and ignored the two bodyguards who flanked her. They were both rather big to be ignoring, looking like a matched set of pale, blond-haired oxen, but treating bodyguards like furniture was the accepted custom in Mariana.

Keiko returned the nod and approached Billy’s table, taking the seat across from him. “Lovely to see you again, Billy Rocks – you’re comfortable with English, yes?”

“I am,” Billy confirmed. His accent in the language tracked more towards American, a product of the sheer amount of airtime American media took up in the global pop-culture space, while Keiko’s had clearly been polished in British schools at some point or another. Billy wondered sometimes how she’d gone from the kind of person who got a foreign education to the kind of person who ran a crime syndicate - but then, there were folks who could wonder similar things about him.

Satisfied that she could continue in her business language of choice, Keiko quickly swiped an order into the menu pad. “I have a job that requires your special blend of efficiency and brutality. The pay is five hundred thousand chitons.”

Straight to business. Typical Keiko. She was direct, shrewd, calculating, and absolutely ruthless; when she called, people answered. Billy Rocks was no exception. While he was certainly dangerous on an individual level, he knew that if the Abyssals wanted him dead, they’d accomplish it with an efficiency that his former corporate employers couldn’t even imagine, no matter how many mercenaries they had at their disposal. But his potential messy death aside, that businesslike attitude was one of the reasons he liked Keiko. She was a finely-crafted knife in human form: sharp, deadly, beautiful, and useful. Billy could appreciate people like that.

“For what?” he asked – interested, but not over-eager. Half a million chitons. He was almost definitely going to take the job; he could live for years on that kind of money, or buy a house back in his old part of town, or book it out to Cousteau or Atlantis or even surfaceside and never look back.

But Billy had rules for himself, and no amount of money could make him snap up a job without asking questions first.

“GeneCorp has something I need in their Research and Development department,” Keiko explained. She flipped her left palm up, revealing a BioFlex screen, and the fiber optics running up and down her arm lit up white – not just decorative, then.

A BioFlex screen was capable of producing full high-definition video, but what Keiko wanted to show Billy was merely a still image, a lo-fi photograph of a flash drive, serial number barely readable. Billy couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen one – people used cloud storage and wristdrives for nearly everything and had for years. A small physical drive like that had its uses, though; it allowed information to be transferred without connecting to anything, and it could be protected both digitally and physically. Depending on who or what you wanted to protect your information from, it could be the best thing going.

Keiko lowered her voice, though Billy expected she wouldn’t have chosen this meeting place and time if she couldn’t be sure of the level of privacy she wanted. “That is the cure to CDD.”

Billy kept his reaction to a blink. “Cure?”

“Cure,” Keiko confirmed, quiet tone laced with sudden intensity. “You get it and bring it back to me, and you’ll get paid. Should you take out some GeneCorp executives while you’re at it, I’ll throw in a bonus.”

She pulled her hand back, folding her arms on the table, and gave Billy a measuring look.

He tilted his head a few degrees to the side, the faintest indication of interest. Cybernetic Dyspraxia and Dementia - known colloquially as CDD or the cybershakes - was widely known to be incurable. Treatable, yes, especially if it was discovered in the early stages, but not curable, despite the frequently reported-on best efforts of multiple universities, hospitals, biotech firms, and pharmacological research groups. Billy didn’t know where she’d gotten her intel, but she was clearly confident of the source.

She ought to be, if she was paying that many chitons for the retrieval. Naturally, there were plenty of quacks claiming to have the cure to rake in the cash from gullible suckers, but Billy doubted this particular instance was an example of it.

“If I am unsuccessful?” he asked. A stupid question with an obvious answer, but he was curious to know just how badly she wanted this.

“You will succeed,” Keiko said. “If I weren’t certain of that, I would hire someone else. If I were to hire someone else after a failure, that would be an additional expense. I don’t care for additional expenses.”

A very polite way of saying that if he failed, he wouldn’t live to see another artificial sunrise, let alone a real one. Classic Shimazaki Keiko.

Billy kept the appreciative smile to himself. “How much time do I have?”

“Four weeks. Faster is better, but I’m a realist, and I know this won’t be easy even for you.”

Keiko glanced down at her palm screen and then looked back to Billy for his answer. He nodded shortly, as good as signing a contract.

It was a high-risk job, but Billy had never been afraid of risk. He could potentially die on the way in, on the way out, or by disappointing Keiko, but he’d never been particularly afraid of death, either. Besides, Billy didn’t allow for the possibility of failure any more than Keiko did. He would succeed, and then he could finally bury his old life and start again.

* * * * *

Goodnight Robicheaux was not a difficult man to find, for anyone who knew where to look. According to Sam Chisolm, the best place to look was usually the Barrelfish, a dingy arcade bar down in the Phos with cheap liquor and free VR games. Robicheaux was easy to spot there - this side of the world he was a head taller than most, had a loud, full laugh that rang out across the whole bar, and he was absolutely destroying his opponents in the multi-player fighting game he’d hustled them into. Those things alone would’ve made him simple enough to track down, even in the mixture of darkness and flashing screens. Most obvious to someone in Dr. Theodore Quattrociocci’s line of work, though, were the cybernetics.

Nearly everyone in the Oceanics had at least one or two enhancements. A wristdrive was standard equipment for anyone with a job, and color-changing eye implants were a popular fashion accessory. Goodnight Robicheaux, however, was tricked out in a way only top hackers were. Theodore recognized the distinctive blue glow of a Takahashi Arctic Fox through the back of Goodnight’s jacket, keeping his temperature lower so his brain could run faster, and that was a GeneCorp holodisplay flashing at the palm of his hand, and at his temple—

“Holy shit.” Theodore didn’t even realize he’d said the words aloud. He’d seen an Archer Owl wetlink device only once before, and it’d been on a corpse. He had no idea how in the hell Goodnight Robicheaux was still alive, upright, and talking, much less playing games and drinking bourbon in a shady arcade bar - or why he still had the damn thing. Sam had told him Robicheaux was a risk-taker, but this was above and beyond.

But above and beyond risk-taking was what Theodore needed, so he waited for the latest round of the game to finish, then made his approach.

“Mr. Robicheaux?” Ugh, he sounded timid. He didn’t mean to, but he’d always been terrible at meeting people. That was what he had Emma for - but of course he couldn’t get Emma mixed up in this. He was on his own and this was probably his last chance, so he straightened his spine and tried again with more confidence. “Goodnight Robicheaux?”

The man paused for a half second before he turned around, grin lazy and eyes lit bright blue and half-lidded in the arcade light. Drunk, Theodore was pretty sure, but he’d never indulged much himself, so it was a little hard to tell.

“That’s me,” the man replied, easy and charming in a way you didn’t see much in places like this. “And nobody cute as you has to call me Mister Robicheaux, but good job on the pronunciation.”

Theodore blinked, startled. Was he being hit on? Just flirted with? Joke-hit-on? He couldn’t tell, and flirtation of any kind always tended to send him into a panic spiral. Which left him staring at Goodnight with what Emma called his Startled Goldfish Face.

Goodnight laughed and shook his head. “Easy, cher, I’m not making a pass at you. You’re… what, maybe twenty-three? I like to give people a chance to ruin their own lives before they get anywhere near me.”

Not for the first time, Theodore cursed the fact that he looked so much younger than he was. It wasn’t that he wanted to be hit on by drunk men in arcade bars, but he did think it would be nice to be taken seriously without having to rattle off a bunch of biotech jargon first.

“Thirty-five,” he said with a sigh. “I’m Doctor Theodore Quattrociocci. As I’m sure you can guess, my name gets butchered all the time, so I try to get other people’s right. And I need your help.”

“My help?” Goodnight snorted and started walking toward the bar. “I don’t go around helping much, but buy me a double of Overholt’s and I’ll hear you out.”

Not the most professional opening one could have hoped for, but it was an opening, so Theodore took it. He ordered Goodnight’s bourbon and a citrus soda for himself with a determined confidence he seldom possessed, then hustled off to an out-of-the-way table as soon as the glasses touched his hands. He let Goodnight take one sip of whiskey and waited a second, because he’d been through this before, and he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone snorting out bourbon - again. Goodnight sipped, tasted, swallowed, and then—

“I need someone to break into GeneCorp.”

Goodnight’s eyes snapped to Theodore’s even as he finished swallowing. Then his throat quivered, the corner of his mouth twitched, and he burst into a laugh so loud it could’ve shaken apart tectonic plates. Laughed so hard he had to lean back in his chair, and Theodore fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut and massage the bridge of his nose. He’d been through this enough times that he’d started getting really sick of waiting for the initial incredulity to die down.

But after a moment Goodnight’s laughter petered out and he looked back up at Theodore. Caught his eyes and stopped, mouth paused in an awkward half-smile of disbelief.

“You’ll have to pardon me, friend. Thought I just heard you say you want to break into GeneCorp. Apologies for mishearin’,” he said, with the kind of forced levity Theodore had seen before from people who drank enough that they couldn’t always be sure they heard things right. Considering how much alcohol Goodnight had consumed in the time Theodore spent watching him, earlier, it seemed like a fair thing to worry about.

“Yes, into GeneCorp’s R&D department,” he confirmed. “I used to work there myself, but I probably talked about releasing the cure to CDD more than I should’ve, and I guess they got to thinking I was gonna do it whether corporate okayed it or not. I got fired.”

“A cure for CDD?” Goodnight’s eyebrows shot up. “Since when is there a cure?”

Theodore winced, brows furrowing and mouth pursing at the ugly feeling in his gut. “Two years,” he said quietly. “GeneCorp’s had it for two years. But treatment’s more profitable than a cure, you know? So they’re sitting on it. And - but - there’re people who can’t afford treatment, and they’re losing their minds and dying, and we could just stop all that, because the cure is right there, but the only way to do that—”

“—is to break into GeneCorp and get it,” Goodnight finished for him.

Theodore swallowed, and nodded, closing his eyes a little to contain the nausea. He knew it was crazy. GeneCorp was one of the biggest biotech firms in the world, and the biggest of them all in Mariana. Their facilities and their systems were more secure than half the bank vaults in the upper sphere. It would take either the most powerful of brute forces or the most skilled of finesse artists to get in, and for all the good things Theodore heard about Goodnight, there was no guarantee he would take the job. Certainly no one else so far had taken his offers seriously.

But he had to try. He had to keep trying, because he’d been so close to the cure and then his big mouth and naïve head got him kicked out before he could help, and now people were still dying when he could’ve helped.

“How much are you offering?” Goodnight said, pulling Theodore out of his quickly worsening spiral.

“Hundred thousand chitons,” Theodore replied, knowing his anxiety about this part was obvious. “—I know, I know it’s not enough, but it’s all I have, and you could make up the difference by getting the news outlets to pay for the scoop. I know people you could contact, and if that won’t work I swear I’ll find some other way to pay you back. All I care about is that the cure gets out there.”

Money talked best in the Phos, and the amount Theodore offered was indeed a laughably low figure for this kind of risk, but he was also right about the kind of money the non-stop news cycle would pay for a story like this. And he meant it - if nothing he had on him would be enough, he’d find a way to make up for it somehow, even if it meant selling the underwear off of his body. He needed to do this.

For a second it didn’t seem like it’d be a deal. Theodore couldn’t blame Goodnight for saying no, but it wouldn’t make the umpteenth failure in getting a contract any less painful. Every second he failed, someone else could die. Every second stalled and Emma—

“All right, Dr. Teddy Q,” Goodnight said abruptly with a glimmer of a smile, making Theodore’s head snap up in surprise. “You got yourself a hacker.”

* * * * *

Collecting starter intel was Billy’s least favorite part of every job. Just because he had the discipline to be good at all the sitting and waiting and patience didn’t make it fun. Fun would start once he was actually sneaking in, creeping around, stealing secrets, and assassinating a few murderous and negligent executives as the direct right hand of karma. That was fun - or at least gave him something physical to do.

For now, he was stuck with basic recon. The coffee shop window gave him a view of GeneCorp’s front entrance and everyone who came and went through it. He’d placed a bug in the GeneCorp lobby while he hand-delivered some really important packages in his frankly underused courier outfit, and his seat in the shop put him in the perfect spot to match voices to faces while he picked apart their corporate security policies. (So far he didn’t think much of those policies; he’d seen better. Had designed better.)

It’d been the same routine for a week, getting a feel for the busiest times of day in GeneCorp HQ, which entrances were guarded better than others, what detection devices they had in place, and who people noticed and who they didn’t. Sure, he was bored out of his mind with 80% of the conversations he was listening in on being mostly work gossip or outside-gossip-coming-into-work gossip, but at least he could have some solid caffeine and a nice croissant while doing so.

The other bit of consolation in the midst of the tedium was The Writer.

The Writer arrived around the same time Billy did every morning, and he was, Billy had noted with total objectivity, the most handsome man Billy had ever seen. He knew it, too, Billy suspected. Nobody wore trousers that fit like that unless he knew his ass was a gift from the gods, and nobody smiled at baristas like that unless he knew his smile would have said baristas putting gratuitous heart designs in his cappuccino foam. The casual French - delivered in that slow and smooth accent - and the pretty blue eyes didn’t hurt, either. If Billy were a barista, he’d be putting hearts in foam for those blue eyes, too.

As it stood, Billy could only covertly observe while he kept his ear on GeneCorp’s inner workings. What would even be the mercenary equivalent for cappuccino foam hearts? Killing one of the man’s enemies with extra flourish?

Not that The Writer looked like the kind of person who had a lot of enemies that needed killing. He had fancy cybernetics, but the gray in his beard said he was old enough to have gotten them back when everybody was getting fancy cybernetics. He spent all day in a coffee shop typing on his tablet, occasionally chuckling at some joke only he noticed and stepping outside every few hours for an old-fashioned tobacco cigarette. The only enemies Billy could imagine him having were whatever trail of broken hearts his charm left in its wake.

If Billy had any idea how to talk to strangers who weren’t part of a job, he might’ve introduced himself and asked for The Writer’s text number on his way out of the shop. Maybe try to ask The Writer out, somewhere where the drinks had more alcohol than caffeine, or directly back to his place - if he was feeling brave. And also had any kind of familiarity with common social graces.

Maybe he’d take the shot afterwards; a half million chitons was bound to give him a little boost of social confidence. First, however, Billy had to finish the job – and that meant staying focused. Just for a few more days. Then he could let the fun begin.

* * * * *

Goodnight had always liked a puzzle.

He had a little collection of them in his shoebox apartment in the Phos, running the gamut from old-fashioned blacksmith puzzles and jigsaws to modern four-dimensional portal games and holospheres. He liked the analytical process, figuring out exactly how all the pieces fit together and in turn how to outsmart them. Puzzles were why he’d fallen in love with hacking – systems architecture was just another problem to solve, a collection of pieces that fit together with strengths and vulnerabilities. He loved poetry for the same reason: words fit together with beauty and grace, outside the usual boundaries of communication, and he got to look at all the parts to find meaning in the same way he’d assemble a network or a jigsaw.

People, though… people were the best puzzles of all.

Anyone could break into a computer system. They all had vulnerabilities, no matter how well-architected they were. Even a script-kiddie from the holonet forums could brute-force a password, given enough time to keep the script running. But breaking in with elegance, that was a real challenge, and an elegant electronic breaking-and-entering job was often more about people than it was about computers.

That was the principle that brought Goodnight not to the GeneCorp headquarters, but to the coffee shop on the bottom floor of the building next door. The place was constantly bustling, illuminated with artificial sunlight reflecting from the slick white furniture and the shining black sea glass floor. An android with a candyfloss-pink pixie cut took orders while a young man with glowing green irises whipped them up for the endless parade of admins, techies, researchers, marketers, and interns who needed a jolt to get them through the rest of the day.

Nearly all of them worked for GeneCorp HQ, and Goodnight wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or sigh at the fact that people were just as bad at corporate infosec as they always had been. This one wearing his entry badge outside the building, that one leaving her tablet in her purse while she went to pick up her drink, another checking her work messages on her palm screen while she stood in line, yet another talking about a project with their friend as if they weren’t surrounded by fifty-odd coffee drinkers… Alone, none of them created a security problem, but in gestalt, they were a wide-open window into GeneCorp.

After a week, Goodnight could recognize most of the regulars. Colleen from Marketing had fiber optic hair extensions, drank a hot black French roast at 0745 every morning, and wanted her boss’s job so bad she could taste it. Thaksin was an intern from the process management group who, judging by his wardrobe, didn’t know colors other than black existed and really ought to break up with his girlfriend given their daily text arguments. Sonny from the Strategic Innovations Group drank frothy lattes with enough chocolate in them to be legally classified as candy bars, did a lot of mournful sighing, walked on the balls of his feet, and watched sports on his palm screen. Dumlao from Security pretended he wasn’t drinking a candy bar by having the baristas put his frappe in a regular coffee cup and should stop being so snippy about his weird order.  
There were dozens, each giving Goodnight a little bit of information he could use, all unknowing. They were why Goodnight liked doing basic recon like this - picking up pieces of people that they were completely happy to give away, fitting them into his mental jigsaw puzzle, all while he could sit and relax and caffeinate. Ideal.

And then there was the one remaining mystery: the Agent of Chaos. Goody had so named him based on the man’s habit of ordering a different combination of coffee and pastry every day. Sometimes he even ordered tea instead of coffee, and what kind of adult was out in the world by 0600 but hadn’t settled firmly into the coffee or tea camp? A goddamn Agent of Chaos, that was who.

Also, Goodnight noted with total objectivity, he was the most handsome man he’d ever laid eyes on.

Straight nose, strong jaw, shapely lips, straight black hair swept into a knot that probably took a quarter hour of fussing to make it look so perfectly effortless, shoulders broad for his frame, and arms that‘d make a sculptor weep for the honor of carving them into marble. He looked to be of Asian descent and had a faint accent when he gave his order in English, but not one Goodnight could place. Not that Goodnight could truthfully say he paid attention to much else besides the man’s mouth when he spoke.

He didn’t work at GeneCorp, that much was obvious – came in around the same time Goodnight did when the shop opened for the day, and he stayed at the corner table by the window with his tablet all morning. He’d often reappear about an hour before closing, after the artificial sunlight had shifted to artificial moonlight, to pick up a pastry and beverage (of yet another different combination) and take up his same corner table for the last dregs of the business day.

Goodnight had theorized several alternate professions: freelance copy editor, small-batch shampoo craftsman, eyeshadow name developer? A food critic, maybe, or a holovision reporter? Maybe a teacher on summer break? He’d never sit in a place where Goodnight could see what he was up to, and never much spoke or called anyone or texted anyone while in line - which honestly just made him more intriguing. He never gave the same name, either: Goodnight had espied Bobby, Benny, Benji, and Borky written on his cup over the past few days. The day the Agent of Chaos confirmed he was just fucking with the baristas when he told them the order was for Banh Mi, Goodnight had to stuff a croissant into his mouth to muffle his sudden burst of laughter.

If not for all the important professional obligations he was here to fulfill, he’d’ve been coming up with an excuse to introduce himself, perhaps share some coffee and a nice conversation with this amusing, intriguing, immensely attractive man. He might anyway, once the job was done and he’d gotten his screwed-up brain implants dealt with. Having a chat and spinning the pastry roulette wheel with the Agent of Chaos might be just the thing for a celebration.

First, however, Goodnight had to finish the job – and that meant keeping his focus on the people who would tell him how to get in. Just a few more days, and he could stop collecting all these puzzle pieces, and start putting them together.

* * * * *

A week and a half after Billy had accepted Shimazaki Keiko’s offer, he was finally ready to make his entrance.

Hair tucked under a hat and wearing the uniform of the sushi place two cubes west and one up from GeneCorp, he didn’t look anything like himself – which was exactly the point. Ten days had been plenty of time for figuring out how the policy for lunch deliveries worked and which restaurants were sufficiently frequent flyers that the guards didn’t check them too closely. The actual getup was pretty simple to obtain; in Billy’s line of work, knowing a good fixer was considered at least as essential as a good medic, and Vasquez was a better fixer than most.

Getting into GeneCorp was almost laughably easy. No one batted an eye at him, and Billy slid through the lobby without even a bit of fuss, hopping on an empty elevator so he could get ready to pull himself up through its emergency hatch as soon as the door closed. He made sure to sidle up casually next to the back wall where the security camera was installed above, carefully put his hands behind his back like he was just dawdling, and then was about to shoot a silent blade from the Lockheed Assassin in his wrist – until he realized the camera was already off, the usual green light unblinking. Weird. But Billy wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If this was the day the camera chose to malfunction, so be it. By the time anyone noticed something was up with one measly elevator feed, he’d be long gone with a pile of bodies behind him and a cure in his hands.

The doors started to close. Billy was preparing himself already, coiled and ready to jump for the hatch, when a hand thrust through the doors at the last possible second and triggered the automatic re-open.

Billy kept his face impassive even as he internally cursed in three different languages. He’d timed this carefully: everyone who ate out for lunch had already gone out and everyone who ate in was in their office. No one should’ve been using this lift right now.

Well. He’d just have to wait for the man to get off on his floor. No hitch in the plan, just a minor delay. He’d faced worse.

And then his elevator companion said, “My apologies, friend,” and Billy suddenly found something entirely new to curse about.

It was The Writer. It had to be. Billy had spent the last ten days hearing that voice - he knew that voice. He’d spent too many spare minutes idly thinking about the ass it was attached to and about maybe inviting the man out for a meal to not know it.

… Except when he looked over, he found the object of his occasional coffee shop ogling had slicked back his hair, sported dark sunglasses and a slim-fitting suit, and carried a leather briefcase. Perfectly understated corporate professionalism down to his shined wingtip shoes, worlds away from the slightly rumpled academic he’d looked like for the past week and a half - it was disconcerting as hell, because The Writer had been in the coffee shop with him at this time every day since he started going there, and Billy would know if the guy was a GeneCorp employee. (Which somehow still didn’t stop him from filing the sight away for later in the shower because goddamn, the suit.)

Just as Billy recognized the Writer, The Writer turned to look at him. Billy slid his gaze away as casually as he could - come on, Rocks, you’re not some rank fucking amateur - but then he caught the Writer’s abruptly widened, huge, pretty blue eyes, and the flash of recognition that sparked in them. Fuck. He could probably take the guy pretty easily, get the body through the hatch or into a closet somewhere—

“The Agent of Goddamn Chaos!” The Writer murmured to himself, amazed, and Billy paused in his tracks.

He narrowed his eyes. “You…” but before he could get around to asking questions or making threats, The Writer started laughing.

“Oh, Lord, I am a fool,” he said, shaking his head. “I should’ve figured you were up to something, too.” He gave Billy a tilted grin, clearly not as troubled by this new complication as he probably ought to be. “You and I better have a chat before we wreck each other’s business up purely by accident.”

“Or I could just kill you.” Billy flicked his wrists and two-inch-long razor-sharp claws slid out of his fingertips with a quiet snikt. But all that got him was a snort.

“Too messy,” The Writer said. “If you’ve been making plans and putting together a sushi delivery costume for the past week and a half, you’re a professional. You don’t want collateral damage.”

He was right about that, unfortunately. Billy didn’t have any qualms about killing if it was necessary, or if he was burying a knife into the temple of some corrupt, nasty corporate overlord, but he didn’t like to go slitting throats gratuitously. Besides, he’d taken a liking to The Writer over the ten days, and now the man had just become at least fifty percent more interesting. If the suit was doing him a favor or two, well, Billy didn’t need to admit it to anyone.

“Look…” The Writer turned one of his charm-the-baristas smiles on Billy. “I ain’t trying to get in your way, and I’d rather you not get in mine either. So how about you and I ride this elevator on back down, slip out the side door, and talk this out over lunch instead of anybody having to figure out where to hide a body?”

It meant losing a day on his timeline, but... Billy was running ahead of schedule anyway. He could afford it, especially since he had to find out just what the fuck The Writer was doing going into GeneCorp covertly, same as he was. It’d be one hell of a coincidence, but GeneCorp wasn’t a small organization - coincidences were possible. Still. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t interfering with some rival crime lord’s business; he hadn’t made it this long without being cautious.

And then - maybe, just maybe - if this all got ironed out and The Writer wasn’t some rival mercenary ready to slit Billy’s throat, he could get his new friend’s text number before they went on about their business.

“You know the dumpling shop on Fourth Avenue?” Billy said, finally. “Meet me there.”

* * * * *

Thirty minutes and one tram stop later, Billy walked into Wo Hop, finest purveyor of handmade dumplings, noodles, and buns in the Phos. To his surprise, his lunch companion was already there, greeting the hostess in passable Cantonese and switching to English to request the booth in the back on the upper floor. It was exactly the table Billy would have requested for conducting private business, which meant that this man knew the restaurant well, which meant that the mystery was growing a little deeper all the time. As if Billy wasn’t interested enough.

He didn’t bother with a hello as he approached. “Who the hell are you?”

The Writer only smiled the smile that Billy was sure had gotten him into equal shares of trouble and fun in his lifetime, looked up with those unfairly blue eyes, and doffed an imaginary hat.

“Goodnight Robicheaux,” he said. “Enchanté.”

Robicheaux, Robicheaux. Billy had heard the name thrown around before, but where—

Ah. The switched-off security camera.

Clearly he shouldn’t have dismissed the man’s fancy cybernetics back in the coffee shop. Goodnight Robicheaux had hacker mods not because it had been fashionable to look like one a decade ago, but because he actually was a hacker. And not a small-time one either.

“Billy Rocks,” he finally replied, once he’d realized that he was staring. He didn’t have to offer his name, but Goodnight had, and Billy took it as a show of trust.

From the way Goodnight’s eyebrows rose, he knew Billy’s name, too. “Well, now I’m real glad you decided not to kill me, because you sure as shit could’ve done it,” he chuckled, loose and easy. “C’mon, let’s get to the table.”

They made their way up, took their seats, and ordered drinks and dumplings (synth-meat, vegetable, or shrimp, all budget-friendly for professionals who hadn’t been paid yet). Once the orders were taken and they were alone, Billy turned back to Goodnight, impassive as the bottom of a cast-iron pan.

“So.” He sat back and tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Clearly we both need something from GeneCorp.”

“Seems so,” Goodnight said thoughtfully. “Care to tell me what you’re after?”

“No.”

Goodnight shrugged. “Worth a shot. I wasn’t planning to tell you what I’m after, either, so I guess that puts us square. I will tell you, though, that my destination’s the seventeenth floor.”

“Research and Development.” Billy eyed Goodnight steadily, trying to decide whether this was someone he could trust. They were going to the same place, and that could bring serious complications.

On the other hand, GeneCorp’s R&D department wasn’t going to be easy to break into, and neither were its executive offices. Security guards, cameras, electronically locked doors, alarms… layers upon layers of physical and digital security. Billy knew he could get past it all - he wouldn’t have taken the job if he didn’t think he was capable - but it was fairly dangerous to life and limb, both of which he was quite attached to. Running the operation by himself also increased the chances of causing collateral damage that Billy wouldn’t feel good about.

Partners came with risks, but so did working alone.

Goodnight had remotely hacked into security feeds before he’d gone more than two feet into the building. They had different enough skill sets that they might actually be of some help to each other. That Goodnight hadn’t just called him out immediately afterwards and instead agreed to a meetup was also a good sign.

Which didn’t mean Billy wasn’t going to hold his cards close, still. “How were you planning to get in?”

“Just your basic social engineering,” Goodnight said with a shrug. “Walk in dressed like this and look like you know where you’re going, even a security guard’s not gonna ask any questions. Even if he did, I had a nice little stack of viable, easy-to-verify excuses ready. Tricky part was gonna be actually getting in R&D - you need special badge access to even get the elevator to go to that floor, much less get in the rooms I need to go to, so I was hoping to scope the place out today and see what I could do from the Access Control office. And hopefully take out some more cameras.”

Goodnight shrugged again, then tilted his head at Billy. “What was your plan, after the sushi delivery?”

“Elevator shaft,” Billy said. Goodnight’s plan wasn’t anything Billy would come up with, but it made sense for someone who was good with people. He respected people playing to their strengths. “Tricky part would’ve been the exit.”

Goodnight hummed, oddly not asking for more, just looked deep in thought. Until the waitress arrived shortly with their shu mai and a pot of jasmine tea, snapping him out of it. When she was gone, he poured tea for both of them, and for the first time Billy noticed the faint tremor in his hands.

“CDD?” he asked, nodding toward Goodnight’s hands.

“No, I’ve been spared that trial thus far,” Goodnight said. He didn’t seem bothered by the question despite how personal it was. “Got a black market Swift installed by a cut-rate surgeon when I was twenty years old and thought I was smart. Still not sure why I thought letting anybody who goes by Snapper G cut into my brain was a good call, but...”

He shrugged, all wry and world-weary humor, sipping his tea - and the smallest breath of a laugh escaped Billy before he could stop it. He didn’t laugh often. A large percentage of Mariana would have insisted that he wasn’t capable of smiling, or that he was actually an android whose emotional response chip had shorted out. He was even a little surprised at himself.

Then again, he did appreciate a properly dry sense of humour. Add a lazy-but-genuine charm and tantalizing hints of a ridiculously high level of intelligence, and you had a recipe for Billy Rocks chuckling out loud in public. Miracles.

“You’re right, that was not a good decision.” Billy’s smile faded and he tilted his head. “Is your judgment better now?”

“Oh yes, you’d be amazed what cutting down on the uppers does for one’s judgment,” Goodnight said with a cheerful honesty that Billy found rather novel. “Though I do feel like it let me down a bit, given that I spent more than a week not fifteen meters from you and never caught on you were casing the same building I was.”

That one got another little snort of a laugh from Billy, and he decided it was time to satisfy his curiosity. “But you did notice me. What was it you called me in the elevator?”

“The Agent of Chaos!” Goodnight laughed aloud, his head tipping back with the sheer relaxed joy of remembering it. “That was what I’d been calling you in the shop, because you never ordered the same thing twice.”

“And that makes me an agent of chaos?” Billy said, lifting skeptical eyebrows.

“Goddamn right it does!” Goodnight laughed again and leaned forward, picking up his chopsticks as if he meant to start eating, and then gestured broadly with them instead. “Nobody varies their order at six in the morning, mon ami. They get the same coffee and the same breakfast every day without fail - except for you! Waltzing in and asking for whatever beverage and pastry your capricious heart demands at any given sunrise.” He nodded decisively and pointed the chopsticks at Billy with a sideways smile. “Agent of Chaos.”

Goodnight finally got around to picking up one of the shu mai, and Billy found himself blinking in amused surprise. Talking more, getting to actually know the man, was probably a mistake - liking people usually was - but he was already taking a lot of risks this week. What was one more? Besides, he was hungry, and they’d already ordered anyway.

“I was calling you The Writer,” Billy said, and grabbed a dumpling for himself, dipping it generously into the black vinegar and ginger. “You were always tapping away on your tablet - and now I suppose I know what you were taking notes for.”

“And I reckon I know what you were looking out the window at, too,” Goodnight replied. “So...seeing as we’re both heading to the same place, what do you say we put your notes and my notes together, maybe fill in the gaps between our skill sets a little bit? Two-man job’s always easier than going solo.”

“If you can trust your partner.”

Goodnight raised a brow. “You want a reference?”

“No.” Billy liked to make his own decisions on who to trust. He might not be a people person the way Goodnight was, but he knew he was a good judge of character. He’d seldom been wrong when deciding who to work with. But still… “I want to know what you’re going after in there.”

Goodnight frowned a little - in confusion, not hostility. “I thought we weren’t discussing it.”

“If we’re both going in, I need to know we’re not going to step on each other’s toes. I don’t want to end up having to hurt you to get what I need.” Billy said, eyes firm, unflinching. He wasn’t really threatening the man - just stating a fact. “I’m sure you understand.”

Goodnight didn’t fluster or go defensive - a good testament to his character, Billy thought. Instead he looked back just as unflinchingly and nodded, face going from easygoing to something definitely more… professional. Back straightened, shoulders tense, all business; the image of someone who knew what he was doing. If Billy wasn’t too busy analyzing the man for any kind of tell, he might’ve found himself enthralled by the change.

Fine. He already knew competence turned him on, anyway.

“My client left a couple things there before he got fired, and HR's being a little difficult about giving them back. I'm just going in to pick them up for him, that’s all,” Goodnight offered. “Client confidentiality means I can’t disclose the explicit details, but that should give you enough of an idea, I’d think.”

Now Goodnight was the one eyeing him, gaze gone cool and hard with his own kind of steel. Billy forced away the shiver of heat in his gut and met that gaze head on. “GeneCorp has failed to deliver some important details that my client needs. I’m to retrieve them.”

Silence for a moment as Goodnight just blinked, processed, and then turned on a megawatt smile that very nearly made Billy’s own traitorous mouth twitch up in the corners. If laughter was a weapon, Goodnight could kill with looks alone.

“Then it seems we’re in the clear! I go after my client’s old stuff, you go grab whatever information you need to pull off of GeneCorp, and we both get out smelling like roses.” Goodnight grinned, clicking his chopsticks cheerfully. “What do you say?”

Billy looked at him, carefully, and tried very hard not to smile just yet.

“There might be blood.”

Goodnight looked at him for only a brief moment, then shrugged and picked up another dumpling. “Billy, mon ami, if I were afraid of your way of dealing with business, I would’ve run out as soon as I recognized your name, no?”

Well. That settled that. Billy made eye contact, held it, and - he wasn’t really sure if he was evaluating Goodnight as a partner in business or bed - but after a few seconds he’d made a firm decision on one of those matters.

“All right,” Billy said at last. “Let’s compare notes.”

* * * * *

“Nice place,” Goodnight remarked, following Billy into his apartment. It was about the size of a silverware drawer, like most flats in the Phos, but well-kept and nicely decorated. He watched as Billy went to the control pad on the wall; a few taps on it had his bed flipped over, replaced with a sleek, simple sofa and a low table clearly well-used and worn with tiny imperfections. The low blue biolights brightened up to a level a person could read by, illuminating himself and Billy in a soft, artificial glow.

Goodnight padded in and took a longer look at his surroundings, seeing what they’d tell him about his new partner in crime. He’d thought the walls were black when they first walked in, but with a little more light he could see that they were actually a rich midnight blue. Instead of being adorned with art, photographs, or framed copies of diplomas, the walls held a collection of sea anemones in small aquariums. Likely they required a lot of care, Goodnight figured, but they were surely pretty; all delicate tendrils and bright colors that seemed to shine from the inside. The furniture was all classic Mariana style: clean lines, a little shimmer to the upholstery, and prettier to look at than comfortable to kick back and read a book on. Probably why Billy had left it on the bedroom setting when he walked out for the day - Mariana’s furniture designers did beds a lot better than they did sofas.

Maybe some other time Goodnight would get to find out if that held true in this space. This time, he took a seat on the sofa and found it adequate to his present needs.

Billy was still at the control pad, firing up a holoscreen and swiping it over to the tabletop, pulling down a fridge unit from the ceiling. “Beer?” he asked.

“Please,” Goodnight said, gratitude only increasing when he saw the actual bottle. His mama, bless her intractably gracious heart, raised him to know better than to ever be picky about free alcohol, but that was a perfectly respectable witbier being handed to him. Clearly, Billy Rocks had good taste.

Goodnight took a sip and smiled before leaning forward to look at the screen Billy had put before him. “Well, well, what have we here? Blueprints?”

“The whole building,” Billy said, coming to sit beside him.

“How’d you get hold of ‘em?” Goodnight asked. He’d gotten the same thing with a little digital snooping in the archives of the architecture firm that designed GeneCorp HQ, but he’d never heard of Billy Rocks being a hacker.

Billy shrugged. “Rappelled down the side of the architect’s offices, cut through a window, borrowed a terminal,” he said, casual as you please.

“Oh, right. Sure. Rappelled down the side of the building, as one does.” Goodnight chuckled. It was funny the things that people considered old hat simply because they were good at them. “My systems penetration approach seems downright dull in comparison.”

“Your outfit for the first entry was better, though,” Billy countered. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he was just about to smile and then thought better of it. A pity, Goodnight thought quietly and only to himself, It’s a thing of beauty to see. And then—

“Actually…do you mind if I change?”

“Far be it from me to impede a man’s activities in his own home,” Goodnight replied blithely, as though he hadn’t immediately started to picture Billy changing clothes while heat raced up the back of his neck. Like he’d said, this wasn’t his house. Though he wouldn’t deny the rising anticipation in his gut at the thought of witnessing Billy en dishabille—

No! This job had enough complications as it was. His life had enough complications as it was. If there was one thing he’d learned in his 20 years spent mostly on the wrong side of the law, it was that sleeping with the people he worked with was a Very Bad Idea. He’d keep his thoughts to himself like a goddamn decent human being, and be entirely, wholly professional.

And then Billy Rocks got up and stripped off his sushi delivery shirt. Sweet merciful gods above, to think he’d thought those shoulders looked good in clothes.

The full view was a damn work of art; shining silver and surface circuitry playing against firm muscle and smooth skin, like some kind of tribute to art, science, and nature all at once. When Billy moved his arms to shrug off the shirt, the flexing sharp contours of shadow creasing the edges of fine muscle across his back made Goodnight’s mouth go dry and his pants go tight. Thank whatever powers might be that Billy had his back turned, because Goodnight was sure his face was betraying him. It’d always been bad about that, and he didn’t even have the sunglasses to hide behind at the moment.

Didn’t matter how well he schooled his face, though, because now his body temp was rising. Which meant that his damn cooling system was now kicking in, deciding to be helpful. The blue light on the Takahashi Arctic Fox lit up a little brighter as it started dumping heat, and he could only pray that Billy didn’t hear the faint sound of its motor going to work. If he didn’t get it together, Billy might think he was about to explode.

Goodnight gave himself a brief but stern mental lecture hammering on the point that he was a grown adult man, not a teenager, and capable of self-control. He thought cold thoughts: glaciers, ice floes, freezing showers when he’d failed to pay the electric bill. Once he was fairly certain he’d gotten the message across to himself, he put his eyes back on the blueprints on the table.

“Having two of us opens our up options considerably,” he said, quite pleased to find that he managed to speak without sounding like he was choking on the desire to crawl across the room to Billy on his hands and knees.

Then, of course, Billy pulled on a gray tank top that cut Goodnight’s mental functionality down by 25%. “What are you thinking?” Billy asked, head emerging, and—

Fuck. A line like that was a golden, glowing gift from the God of Flirtation Set-Ups, and Goodnight had to just ignore it? Terrible. Full-fledged miscarriage of justice is what it was. He felt like he was betraying his innermost being as he responded with what he was thinking about the job.

“Well… first things first, we’ll need to deal with the cameras. I’ve avoided prison and assassination this long, and I’d very much like to maintain that winning streak as long as possible. As I assume you have similar priorities, that means getting as many eyes off us as we can, especially the electronic ones.”

“That would make this easier, yes,” Billy agreed. He tossed his sushi shirt up toward an automatic laundry chute and came back to the sofa.

Goodnight wasn’t sure if he was grateful or disappointed that a change of trousers was evidently not also in the cards. He wondered what Billy’s plan had been, going in today. Probably something that involved a lot of Atlantean Knockouts and at least a few stabbings. He certainly had the arms for it.

The job. Focus on the job.

“Unfortunately for us, GeneCorp has a very clever little camera setup,” he went on, letting out a little sigh and taking a sip of his beer. “I can get into the elevators and some of the hallways, but the office spaces are on a separate system entirely, with no remote access. To take those out, I’ll need to actually get inside and place a physical bug on that system.”

Billy thoughtfully swallowed his mouthful of beer. “That might be easiest to do overnight. A traditional break-in.”

It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but actually not a bad idea, Goodnight thought. Not the way he normally did things, but not a bad idea. Wouldn’t work for the retrieval, simply because he was going to need more time than they’d have on a smash job, but just for planting the bug, it could work. “If we go in on a different floor than the one we’re aiming for, that should keep suspicion off. Maybe we even steal some random bullshit for misdirection?”

“Or vandalism,” Billy suggested. “GeneCorp has many enemies.”

“Some of whom are indeed of the sort who’d break in just to paint ‘mods are murder’ on the walls or wreck up the place,” Goodnight said, nodding to himself as he considered it. “We go in and make a big mess; they just think it’s a pair of angry vandals who wanted to make their mark and succeeded. They’re not gonna look for a tiny little bug on a camera. Yeah, yeah - that could work.”

Billy apparently considered it a decent enough preliminary plan. “So, if we have a way to disable the cameras… then what?”

“Then the easiest way in is semi-legitimate access,” Goodnight said. “I’m not the fingersmith I was as a younger man, but with a little guaranteed distraction, I’m pretty sure I can lift a couple entry badges for us in the coffee shop. The damn fools are always leaving them in messenger bags and on tables. Then we both get to wear the good outfit on the way in.”

“I like it so far.”

“From there, we get to Access Control,” Goodnight said. He flipped through the blueprint until he found the floor plan for the fourth level, then tapped to highlight a small central room. “According to Colleen - who really shouldn’t be talking about work in the coffee shop - that’s where you go to get a temporary badge if you left yours at home, or to get a replacement if yours is permanently lost, which means that’s where we can get blank badges and rewrite the credentials to replace the ones we walked in with.”

Billy nodded. “So we get up there, knock out whoever’s working, then write ourselves access to wherever we want to go.”

“And then we go there,” Goodnight agreed. “Likely we’ll need a costume change, if we want to walk into R&D without anybody paying us any attention.”

“So we need to find out if the R&D department here is the ties-and-lab-coats type, or the we-haven’t-changed-our-style-since-grade-school type.”

Goodnight couldn’t help but laugh - he knew so many geeks who really hadn’t reconsidered fashion since age 13. “My client ought to be able to fill us in on that. So we can get ourselves in… but now we both need to find what we’re looking for.”

“Fire alarm was what I was thinking of for my exit,” Billy offered. “But it could also work to clear the R&D labs out.”

“Fire alarm, or chemical alarm… yeah, anything like that’ll trigger an evacuation of the floor.” Goodnight considered the idea a little further, and decided he liked it. “I’ll talk to my client about which one’ll get us the most time to work with. So now we’ve gone in, grabbed our respective things, and have presumably not died yet. How do we also get out? Which, might I remind, is harder than actually getting in. GeneCorp’s built like a goddamn lobster trap.”

Billy took a sip of his beer as he contemplated other options. “Head for the roof, rappel down?” he suggested, to which Goodnight raised his eyebrows. He didn’t know what about his clothing, manners, or speech suggested that he was in any way capable of rappelling down a 128-floor building, but whatever it was, he really needed to change it.

“I apologize, I should have clarified that I was looking for an idea that would get us both out alive,” he said. “Everything I know about rappelling is strictly academic, and I am fairly certain a building of that height is not considered a beginner-level attempt.”

“None of those bits and pieces are for climbing?” Billy gestured vaguely at Goodnight’s cybernetics.

“Not a one!” Goodnight chuckled. “And I’m not looking to add any more anytime soon. I take it some of yours are?”

Billy nodded. “In a way. One for reflexes, one for strength.”

“And the claws.”

“And the claws,” Billy acknowledged. “I think maybe we split up for the escape. I’ll go to the roof, zip down. You do one of your disguises, walk out the front door.”

Goodnight drank more beer while he considered. Separate exits would throw people off their trail; Billy could do his crazy urban climbing business, Goodnight could stick with what he was good at, and then they could both go get paid. And then, with any luck, he’d get himself to a decent cybernetic surgeon before his brain exploded. Yeah, it could work.

“Dim sum after to celebrate?” he said with a tilted smile.

Billy nodded. “Assuming we don’t die.”

Goodnight laughed and raised his bottle. “I’ll drink to that.”

“To not dying.” Billy clinked the top of his bottle with Goodnight’s. Goodnight grinned.

“To not dying.”

* * * * *

If asked, Billy would neither confirm or deny that he was a little bit disappointed at the prospect of having to part ways for a while after that first meeting. He could, however, confirm that he was pleased to be wrong for once.

As it turned out, their quest for access badges would enable him to spend more time chatting with Goodnight. His display of shirtlessness hadn’t gotten him anywhere the previous afternoon, but Goodnight’s non-response could’ve stemmed from simply being professional, not necessarily from lack of interest. Anyway, if nothing else, spending the day talking to him while looking for openings to cause a distraction and nab a couple of badges ought to give Billy a better idea of whether he actually liked the guy or just liked his ass.

In keeping with their plan, Goodnight arrived first, wearing that same slightly messy academic look from before: soft gray sweater, black topcoat with the wide glowing buttons that had been fashionable five years ago, dark blue scarf looped loosely around his neck, and - of course - the tight black trousers and knee-high boots that had first gotten Billy’s attention.

It was still a good look. Billy walked in and checked Goodnight out like he used to, but this time he actually got to make the approach. Strictly for the job, of course.

“Hey. Mind some company?” he asked, nodding to the seat next to Goodnight.

“Not at all,” Goodnight replied. Then he looked up and smiled, and Billy wondered how it was possible that he was going weak at the knees despite having a cybernetically reinforced musculoskeletal system. He was a fucking adult in his 40s, for fuck’s sake. Yet here he was, faced with pretty blue eyes, and wondering if maybe his skeleton was actually melting.

Luckily his next move was to sit down, placing today’s peppermint mocha and chocolate croissant on the table as he folded into the chair and firmly refused to think about the growing painful softness he felt for a shady man he’d only just met. Instead, he told himself to enjoy this part of the job, the easy part: looking like regular coffee shop patrons while they waited for their chance. There weren’t too many people in yet, which gave them time to get settled in, fade into the wallpaper, and for Billy to get himself together.

“Thanks,” he said after a beat too long, and only just kept the grimace off his face. He felt every bit as awkward as he would have if he’d been making the approach in truth. “I’m Billy.”

Goodnight grinned. “Not Baozi?” he asked, nodding to the name neon-penned onto Billy’s coffee cup.

Of course he’d seen that. Billy chuckled. “No, my parents did not actually name me after a steamed bun. I give them different names. Just to make it interesting for them.”

“I’ve noticed,” Goodnight said, laughter in his voice. “I was trying to decide last week whether Benji or Banh Mi was funnier.”

That caught Billy off guard. Goodnight had paid attention. And he knew now that Goodnight hadn’t considered him a useful target to know anything about - he’d just noticed because he’d felt like noticing. He wanted to notice Billy - he wanted to pay attention to Billy. As that sank in, something unfamiliar and warm loosened the tense knot in his chest, letting his shoulders relax just a fraction, and suddenly it was much, much easier to make conversation.

“Banh Mi,” he said, deadpan. “Because I ordered a sandwich that day, so I was a sandwich with a sandwich.”

Goodnight laughed out loud, and as he leaned back to laugh, his hand ended up on the back of Billy’s chair. “You’re right, that is good,” he said. “I’m Goodnight, by the way.”

“Goodnight?” Billy played along - but now he had a chance to ask something he’d been wondering about. “How did you get that name?”

“I’m from Cousteau,” Goodnight replied, shrugging. “When you grow up in the artistic capital of the Oceanic City-States, a random word for a name doesn’t even seem that odd. I went to school with a girl named Armadillo.”

“Isn’t that a…” Billy’s brow furrowed.

“...basically a cross between an armored car and a possum?” Goodnight finished. “Yeah. She said her mother just liked the sound of the word. Coincidentally, that’s the only story I ever got out of my mother, either, when I got old enough to bother asking why in the hell she’d named me Goodnight. Mama was a prima ballerina in the Oceanic Ballet, a free spirit who’d never let something so petty as traditional naming conventions hinder her, and Daddy was much the same - he was the ballet’s pianist.

“The two of them liked flouting convention and the expectations of their dull surfaceside parents, so here I am, named Goodnight.” He seemed to be on the verge of launching into a longer story; instead, he paused and gave Billy a curious smile. “What about you? Any stories behind being Billy?”

“Picked it myself,” Billy replied with a shrug. “I had a name that wasn’t serving me well anymore, so I gave myself a new one from a book I liked.”

It was an abridged version of the actual story, but Billy didn’t owe Goodnight his past. He liked the guy, it was obvious - but he didn’t need to tell Goodnight just how hard he fell and how long he ran before he picked a new name out of a book. Not now, not yet.

“What book?” Goodnight asked, though his eyes darted past Billy to see if the man who’d just come in was going to abandon his bag or not. Billy fought the urge to smile.

“Billy Bloom and the Battle for Mars,” he said. “Old-fashioned 22nd century sci-fi. It was the first book I ever read in English.”

“Yeah?” Goodnight’s attention came back to Billy as fast as it had left - the man in the coffee line wasn’t clever enough to keep the end of his badge lanyard from hanging out of his bag, but he was unfortunately smart enough not to leave his bag on a table. “What’s your first language?”

“Korean.” No potential marks in the back of the shop, either. “Japanese second - my family moved to MegaTokyo when I was four. English came last, while I was in school.”

“Third language, and your accent’s still better than mine,” Goodnight laughed.

“I like your accent,” Billy said before his brain caught up with his mouth. Another man might have stumbled and tried to cover the slip. Billy just shrugged and let the words stay where they were. It wasn’t flattery if it was true, and if his face felt warm, there wasn’t anyone stupid enough around to try and prove it. “You’re right, though. Never really need to tell people that you’re from Cousteau. But that’s not a bad thing. I like listening to you speak.”

For a second, Billy wondered if he’d said too much. But then he glanced up and— Goodnight looked genuinely bashful at the compliment, cheeks going pink enough to splotch to his ears. It was adorable, so Billy threw out any apprehensions he had about saying any of it. He was about to push it just a hair further when he noticed a faint whirring sound.

He blinked. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” The sound got a little more insistent. The pink splotching on Goodnight’s face deepened to red.

“That,” Billy said, looking around. It sounded an awful lot like what he’d heard in his apartment the night before. He’d written it off as his table display’s cooling system, but this was clearly coming from somewhere nearby. In fact, it seemed to be coming from… Goodnight? Puzzled, Billy noted that the round blue light on Goodnight’s back was glowing a little brighter than it normally did. Was that it?

“Oh, that,” Goodnight said, waving dismissively when he saw where Billy was looking. “That’s just old cybernetics acting up. Don’t pay it any mind.”

Billy frowned. Goodnight wasn’t making eye contact. Unstable cybernetics weren’t something to wave off; small hiccups in body-tech could lead to full-scale malfunctions that could destroy someone, inside and out. He’d seen it too many times himself - even excluding the Archer Corp incident - and he’d been unsure about the queasily familiar tech at Goodnight’s temple since the beginning. It didn’t bode well for either the man and or for the job they were now tackling together.

Then again, Goodnight knew his cybernetics better than Billy did, and he wasn’t dead yet. So when they both spotted a woman walk in with her badge attached to her purse rather than her person - their first real opportunity of the day - Billy just inclined his head and let it go.

“Need anything from me?” he asked.

“Distraction,” Goodnight said, looking oddly relieved. “Get up to go to the toilet for a second, like you just stepped in to blow your nose. Then come out and make some kind of fuss.”

It sounded easy enough. Billy even appreciated being left some creative freedom. He headed into the bathroom as suggested, came back out, and slipped dramatically on a puddle of water that he’d surreptitiously spilled there himself on the way in.

He went down flailing and played it up when people swarmed to him - putting on a weak smile and pretending it pained him to get up, I’m fine, I’m fine, please don’t worry. Goodnight swiped the target’s badge while she was looking at Billy’s scene, tucked it into a pocket inside his jacket, and then rushed over to Billy to offer aid.

“No, I’m fine,” Billy said, which was true, but he let Goodnight help him to his feet anyway. “Nothing hurt but my dignity.”

“Glad to hear it,” Goodnight said, guiding Billy back to their table with a gentle hand on his arm. Once they were seated, he leaned in close. “One down, one to go,” he said, his breath warm on Billy’s ear, and Billy had to fight down a shiver before it gave him away.

They chatted some more while they waited for their next mark to appear. Billy didn’t even know he was capable of talking for this long, about what amounted to basically nothing at all. Even with Vasquez, he was more than content to just sit and listen, chiming in occasionally when he felt like it. That was how most of his interactions went. And it wasn’t hard to listen to Goodnight to talk about his artistic upbringing, his favorite poets, his favorite VR games, how he’d dropped out of university.

But this time, Billy found himself conversing back.

It was just so easy. Casually discussing his parents’ determination to make a better life for him and his siblings, his youngest sister’s love of circuitpaint street art, the care of sea anemones. The dramatic crime procedural holoprogram he was mildly obsessed with. (He did draw the line at revealing his secret addiction to romance webtoons. Some things weren’t appropriate for a first fake-date.) Conversation flowed readily with hardly a hint, if any, of an awkward silence - which was amazing, because Billy knew he was the walking personification of awkward silence.

It was just - Goodnight’s way of talking, of laughing and smiling - he drew words out of Billy that he didn’t even know he had. And Goodnight even listened to what he had to say. If this had been a real first date, Billy would’ve thought his odds of getting a kiss at the end of it were pretty good.

Their next opportunity for a lift came during the lunch rush: a man put his backpack down to claim a table, with his badge sitting right there in the clear front pocket. Billy and Goody saw it, shared a look and a smirk, and by the time the man noticed his badge had gone, they were already on the first tram back to the Phos.

“We can hit my place this time,” Goodnight said, arm looped casually around a railing to keep his balance on the speeding tram, voice bouncing with every bump and shake, blissfully unaware of the less-than-professional thoughts Billy’s mind kicked up at his words. “I’ve got a few tools of the trade there.”

“You live in the Phos too?” Billy asked.

“Corner of Ebi and Granrojo, level 156,” Goodnight said with a nod. “Just a couple cubes up from the Barrelfish.”

Billy quirked a brow. “Because your tech didn’t scream ‘I’m a hacker’ quite enough.”

Goodnight’s eyes lit up and his pretty mouth spread into a laugh. “Knives ain’t the only thing sharp about you, are they?”

“You tell me,” Billy said dryly, though he couldn’t help the smile twitching across his lips, and he watched the corners of Goodnight’s eyes wrinkle as they pulled into the stop.

The location, it turned out, was the only thing about the flat that screamed ‘hacker.’ “I see the cigarettes are not the only old-fashioned thing about you,” Billy said politely, only just managing to hold back a grin as he took in the soft-looking furniture, the actual paper books on a shelf above the desk, and the framed posters of classic VR cinema on the walls.

“Yeah, about the only properly contemporary thing in here is this,” Goodnight chuckled, gesturing to the battle station between the kitchen and the living area as he led Billy in. He had a nice setup: three large holodisplays, a cluster of mysteriously glowing tubing, whirring motors and blinking lights, and a worn brown leather desk chair entirely suitable for an old-fashioned realspace library, except for the direct-connect ports and touchpads on the arms. The whole thing still looked more like an early 22nd century neo-noir film set than a hacker’s space, even with the modern tech.

Goodnight had a knowing smile on his face by the time Billy glanced back at him. “Fewer connections and electronics means fewer points of entry - and I just like Rimbaud better on the page than the screen.”

Well, fair enough. Besides, there was a certain charm to a cutting-edge hacker preferring the antique, not that Goodnight needed any more charm than he already had. Billy dropped himself onto Goodnight’s sofa, in his usual habit of looking relaxed wherever he went whether he actually felt that way or not, and watched with interest as Goodnight swung one of his cinema posters (a last-century remake of Yojimbo) out from the wall to reveal a cabinet well-stocked with pantry staples.

“I like to pretend like I’m gonna get my shit together and cook properly,” Goodnight said as he took a bottle of liquor down from the top shelf. “Then I go on and shame my French ancestors by living on takeout instead. But it’s comforting to know there’s sugar in the cabinet, ready for those rare occasions in which I find myself in a flurry of motivation. You like bourbon?”

“Sure.”

Goodnight poured. The tremor in his hands seemed to come and go, Billy noted - he seemed to be struggling more now than he had been that morning, when he’d held his cup of cappuccino with no sign of trouble and lifted an access badge smooth as silk.

“Some time when there’s not so much work ahead of us, I’ll make you a mint julep,” Goodnight said, bringing a glass over to set on the table in front of Billy. Billy nodded his thanks and tried to suppress the sudden spark of something in his chest just from hearing that Goodnight apparently wanted to see him again. After all this was over. “For today we’ll just have to enjoy the whiskey in all its unadulterated glory. But first…” Goodnight took a drink and stepped back, his right pupil glowing red. “Gimme a smile, Billy Rocks, it’s time for your GeneCorp badge photo.”

“You’re not supposed to smile for badge photos,” Billy said.

“Gimme a smile anyway?” Goodnight grinned, and Billy found himself helpless to refuse. It was only a little smile, a faint and secretive thing, and not one that most people got to see.

“Perfect!” Goodnight declared cheerfully. The light in his eye went dark, and he took a sip of whiskey on his way to the desk chair.

“Google Eye?” Billy asked.

“Yeah, handy for pulling information and snapping pictures and all that,” Goodnight replied as he sat. “I started with the Apple version, but it don’t play nice with the Swift or the Owl, so Google it is.”

The Owl. Ice-cold shock crawled up Billy’s spine, washing away every bit of ease and relaxation. “You have an Owl? You still have an Owl?”

“Yeah,” Goodnight said, nonchalant, taking a cable to connect his desktop to his wristdrive like he didn’t care that the thing attached to his skull was liable to cook his brain into scrambled eggs. “That’s actually why I picked this job up. It needs to go, and has for a long time. So does the Swift, really, but that was the one where I learned my lesson about cheap surgeons. This job should pay for somebody good to get rid of both - which’ll probably put me out of the game as far as actually busting into a system’s concerned, but honestly, I don’t think I even care about that anymore.”

Jesus. Billy’d noticed the port at Goodnight’s temple, but hadn’t thought it was one of those. Had assumed it connected to the Sony Swift. Had hoped, anyhow, and ignored what evidence his eyes were providing.

Now he couldn't, and dread lay bitter in his throat. He’d done the right thing, he knew he’d done the right thing as soon as he had enough evidence to act, but it still didn’t assuage his guilt over the damage already inflicted. The people who’d already died. When it was someone he knew— the guilt multiplied threefold.

He held it all back behind his teeth and watched Goodnight scan one of their pilfered badges with his eye while he uploaded Billy’s photo. The blue circle on Goodnight’s back was glowing brighter again, accompanied by the same whirring sound from the coffee shop and his apartment. Probably a cooling system then, which made sense if Goodnight was overclocking his own brain to run several tasks simultaneously.

Eventually he asked, “What will you do? After?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Neither do I,” Billy admitted. “The pay for this job will put me in a much better position than I have been in for some time. Once that goal is met…I’m not sure what to do next.”

Goodnight nodded, fingers flying over the touchpad on the left arm of his chair, arranging Billy’s picture on the new badge cover he was creating. “So far I’ve ruled out drinking myself to death, shrimp farming, prostitution, and professional calligraphy,” he said. “And moving surfaceside.”

There was a long pause as Billy tried to decide two things: whether Goodnight was joking, and whether it would be appropriate for Billy to laugh if he was.

He settled for a raised brow and a skeptical, “You really considered all of those?”

“Some more seriously than others,” Goodnight said, glancing over with another one of those tilted grins. “After all, can you imagine pale and delicate skin like this on the surface? I am clearly not meant for unfiltered sunlight.”

“But prostitution, drinking yourself to death, calligraphy, or shrimp farming…”

“I’m too lazy for prostitution. The marketing alone is a full-time job, and I’m too old for those kinds of hours these days. I used to have very fine handwriting - thank you Cousteau City Schools - but I’ve got no guarantee that the neurological damage from my mods isn’t permanent, so calligraphy’s nothing to bank on.”

The casual tone of Goodnight’s voice, the ease of his smile - Billy found himself relaxing again in the face of that smile. Like he couldn’t help but echo Goodnight’s moods.

“Drinking myself to death… well, that did hold some appeal for a while, but I decided there’s too much I like about living to give up on it just yet. The shrimp farming suggestion, I must admit, was purely in jest - I wouldn’t know a shrimp farm if I fell into one.”

“I think… actually,” Billy said thoughtfully, “I’ve seen a live shrimp only once. Despite the fact that I’ve lived underwater for half my life.”

“Ugly little bastards, ain’t they?” Goodnight tapped his touchpad a few times, that genuine laugh still alight in his voice that Billy’d so rarely ever heard in any other person living in the Phos. Behind Goodnight, something started printing. “I’m convinced that if they lived on land, no one would ever have thought to eat them. Instead of shrimp farms, we’d have shrimp exterminators.”

“You think?” Billy entertained the thought. Shrimp were delicious. They’d been among his favorite foods since he was a child. Goodnight was right about them being ugly, but so was a lot of food.

Goodnight leaned out from behind the display to give Billy a skeptical look. “If one came running out from under this desk right now, would you be saying ‘quick, catch it!’ or stomping on it?”

“All right, fair,” Billy had to acknowledge. “They are bugs. But tasty bugs.”

“The tastiest!” Goodnight laughed and spun around in his chair to grab the forged credentials he’d just printed off on flexible electronic paper. “Here, come take these and stick ‘em on our badges, since you’ve got the steady hands.”

Billy got up to take the glossy, nano-inked sheet and promptly snorted. “Banh Mi Stone and Farewell Robbychucks?”

“There’re stranger names in Mariana, mon ami. And you would not believe how many times I’ve heard my name pronounced that way.” Goodnight disconnected from the computer and came to join Billy on the sofa with his drink, flopping back onto it and propping his feet up on the table. Billy thought, very briefly, about how nice it was to feel the dip of Goodnight’s weight beside him - and then something chimed faintly, causing Goodnight to glance down at the holo-lens in his palm.

“Ah, my man with the inside knowledge got back to us!” Goodnight flexed his fingers, firing up a holographic image of a text message with the picture of an awkward-looking young blond-ish man next to it.

Casual. Lots of hoodies. Chemical spill will buy more time than fire.

“For our entrance to R&D?” Billy asked, absorbed in applying their fake badge fronts with the kind of precision you could only get with his kinds of body mods.

“Yes, it seems we’ll be dressing down for that part. That should at least make your descent a little easier,” Goodnight said, relaxing and flicking the display off as he let his head drop back against the back of the sofa with a sigh, like he’d run out of battery charge. And, incidentally, baring his throat in a way that made Billy’s mouth simultaneously water and go dry.

It’d be terribly easy to just lean over and kiss down that long, pale stretch of vulnerable skin. Feel that Adam’s apple against his lips, his teeth, his tongue, drag that scarf out of the way, hook his fingers into the collar of Goodnight’s sweater—

“Right, good,” Billy said, cutting his own thoughts off. Guess that more-or-less answered the question he’d started the day with: he definitely liked Goodnight, not just his ass. He tried very hard not to think about just how screwed he was. Needed to focus. “So tomorrow we can arrange our costumes and pack our bags, and pick up what we will need to create a fake chemical spill.”

“Got any ideas on how to pull the fake chem spill off?” Goodnight asked, lolling his head to the side to look at Billy.

“Something we can throw into a vent, I think,” Billy said, grateful for something to consider other than the elegant line of Goodnight’s jaw. “A strong release of veridian gas, maybe. That would set off an alarm without doing any actual harm, and if it goes into a vent, it should spread quickly and visibly enough to make people get out instead of assuming the alarm is a drill.”

“I got no idea what in the name of heaven veridian gas is, but sure! That sounds good,” Goodnight said, chuckling. “You know where to get that and a means of release?”

“My employer is a person who acquires things,” Billy said. “If she can’t help, I know of at least one other source. I will get what we need.”

“Always good to have a fixer. You know, given the ways our kinds of circles tend to overlap in the Phos, I bet we know a bunch of the same people.”

Billy huffed out a half-laugh, half-snort in agreement. It was more strange that it’d taken them this long to run into each other, to be honest. Like most cities, the underworld of Mariana’s specialists and criminals could become a small town very quickly. He’d have to ask Goodnight who his people were after they were done here.

First, though: “Can you be free to do the break-in tomorrow night?”

“You will be pleased to know that my social calendar is entirely empty.” That lopsided smile had wound its way onto Goodnight’s face again. “Unless, of course, you intend me to climb any more than three stories, in which case I am booked solid through December.”

“No, no.” Billy waved a dismissive hand. While he might very much enjoy a climbing run - and also the sight of Goodnight covered in straps and rope - it wasn’t worth the risk. “We use the sewer to come in, enter through the basement.”

Disgust flashed across Goodnight’s expression, so wordlessly eloquent it startled a laugh out of Billy, and seriously, what kind of criminal had a poker face that awful? (Though - he probably had a perfectly good poker face. Maybe he just felt comfortable enough around Billy to be honest. And maybe Billy was a little bit fucked. Whichever.)

“I hate sewers,” Goodnight sighed.

Billy shrugged, humor still laced through his tone. “Everybody hates sewers. They’re cramped, they’re difficult to get out of, and they smell like shit. But when I was looking for entry options, I found a primary line running below the building. I can get us in through there, then zip line up the maintenance elevator shaft to the second floor. No climbing necessary.”

“Yeah, all right.” Goodnight didn’t look thrilled about it, but didn’t offer anything better. Of course, if he’d looked excited at the prospect of slogging through a sewer, Billy would’ve worried that Goodnight’s sketchy cybernetics had actually driven him insane. “It’ll get us in, up, and out, and I reckon that’s all we really need. Second floor is Marketing, isn’t it?”

“Yes. So I think we disguise this as vandalism. Make a big mess and get out.”

Goodnight was already nodding. “Easy enough to do, and they won’t be looking around for anyone more dangerous than some hooligans. We bang things up, leave a glorious manifesto on their computers, I get our bug installed, and we’ll have ourselves some camera control for the main event.” He snapped his fist closed.

“And then we move in the next day,” Billy decided.

Goodnight hummed. “Sounds like a plan.”

Billy nodded. “I will let you know when I have the veridian. You have the gear you will need for tomorrow?”

“What kind of criminal would I be without a black turtleneck and a ski mask?” Goodnight asked with a grin. “Shall we make a proper event of this and do it at midnight?”

“That will do.” Cool. Professional. Not at all affected by that teasing mouth.

“Great. You, ah…” Goodnight hesitated, then coughed and started again. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good.” Billy knew he should go. He didn’t want to go, but they’d set their plans and didn’t have a reason to plan more. So he pushed aside all hazy notions of asking Goodnight out to dinner and got to his feet. “Until tomorrow.”

Goodnight gave him a lazy smile that almost had Billy reconsidering his commitment to professionalism. “À demain. And watch your back out there, all right?”

Billy smiled back. “I always do.”

* * * * *

Shimazaki Keiko was a busy woman. Running the Abyssals and maintaining her power in the city took up a lot of time, even after she’d gotten better at delegating. She probably should have delegated this meeting with Billy Rocks - any lieutenant could’ve requisitioned veridian gas, or she could’ve told Billy to get it himself. Specialists like him had access to plenty of resources.

Handling the conversation and delivery herself, however, meant she could get a progress update straight from the source without looking unduly anxious about it. This job was personal. She wanted the news directly, not from some fumbling underlings.

She was checking the status of a sedatol shipment with one hand and petting her orange cat with the other when Billy Rocks arrived for their appointment. He walked in with all the poise and leashed, hidden strength that she was paying him for, approached her desk, and nodded in greeting; the cat purred its approval under her fingertips. Billy reminded Keiko of it sometimes: independent, aloof, graceful, and an extremely capable hunter. Luckily he didn’t share her cat’s penchant for perching on the arms of desk chairs.

Well, not her desk chair. There might be someone out there whose desk chair he perched on all the time, but that wasn’t relevant to business. Also, she didn’t really care.

“Your veridian gas,” she said, indicating a plastic box at the corner of her desk.

“Thank you,” Billy said, polite and blank as ever.

The little orange cat stretched, briefly baring its claws before hopping down from the arm of the chair to sit on Keiko’s lap. Keiko continued absently stroking the cat’s head, feeling it purr as she glanced up at Billy.

“When do you move?”

“We will do phase one tonight, phase two tomorrow.”

Keiko pursed her lips. She’d only known Billy to work alone, other than the odd contact here and there, but this sounded more like a partner. “We?” she said, by which she meant, give me something to confirm this new variable will be an asset, not a hindrance. I’d prefer not to have to kill you and some other poor idiot.

Billy seemed to understand, judging by the subtle way his shoulders tightened. Good. She wasn’t heartless. She also wasn’t a fan of all the tedious formalities necessary to dispose of multiple bodies discreetly.

“I got a hacker for this one,” Billy said. “Goodnight Robicheaux.”

Well, then. Even more surprises. “I haven’t heard his name much since the Archer job,” Keiko said, slowly. Robicheaux had been out of the game long enough that the rumor mill eventually concluded he’d gone into retirement.

A slight furrow had appeared between Billy’s brows in a rare show of emotion. “Archer?” he asked, as good as a double-take on anyone else. Keiko smiled.

“He didn’t mention he burned your former employer’s network to the ground? Excellent work,” she said with quiet satisfaction - it was always a pleasure to watch one of the big corporate types get thoroughly shredded, “but according to my sources, he burned himself rather badly in the process.”

The furrow smoothed out after a moment and Billy said, “Good to know.” Cool as ever. He picked up his box. “Anything else?”

She said nothing for a few beats. The cat under her palm was starting to knead her thighs, but she didn’t take her gaze away, even as tiny, sharp claws starting digging into the meat of her legs and then out again. Watched him and kept her silence. But he was a professional, Billy Rocks - stance prepared and solid, meeting her eyes without fear, but free of arrogance. And regardless of Keiko’s curiosity, Billy could employ whatever services he needed to get the job done; he was being paid handsomely enough to hire a partner if he wanted one. Robicheaux, from what she knew, was not the kind of man to screw partners over.

Besides, Billy knew her feelings on failure. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize this job.

“No, that is all,” she finally said. “Report to me when you’re done, and you’ll have your money.”

Billy inclined his head, then turned to the door. “Have a good evening.”

As he walked away, Keiko scratched behind her cat’s ears. Reminded and assured herself that she had hired the very best. By tomorrow night, she’d have some revenge for herself, a cure for the world, and safety for Emma - they had nothing to worry about, and they would succeed.

God knows she’d burn the world down for anything less.

* * * * *

“Putain de merde,” Goodnight muttered to himself as a wave of disgust washed over him. He hoped this walkway beside the sewage would get them all the way to their destination, because there was no shower in the world long enough to get him clean after stepping in that stuff. He’d have to bathe in disinfectant. He’d have to cauterize his nostrils. He’d have to boil his sweater, and his boots, and possibly also the rest of his legs.

“What does that mean?” Billy asked from a few steps ahead. At least Goodnight had a nice view for this incredibly disgusting journey, as long as one discounted all the scenery that wasn’t Billy Rocks.

“The best English translation would be fucking shit.”

“Ah, so a literal complaint.”

Goodnight couldn’t see his face, but he thought he could hear a smile. Nothing big and bright, but something beautiful all the same in the quiet, graceful way Billy Rocks had. It made Goodnight smile, too; after their day in the coffee shop, he was starting to get a handle on what Billy’s amusement looked and sounded like.

It’d been a pleasant surprise for Goodnight to find out Billy wasn’t nearly so cold as his reputation made him out to be. It’d been even more pleasant to discover the wealth of microexpressions under that stoic facade - yet another puzzle, one Goodnight was all too delighted to decode.

Billy was reserved, certainly, and not what anyone would call talkative, but he had a perfectly lovely emotional range. You just had to put in more attention and effort to identify where Billy was on the range at any given time. He had a fine sense of humor, too - dry as a surfaceside sand pit, but sharp and clever. In short, there was much more to like about Billy Rocks than how well he filled out his jacket (which was very well indeed).

“Yes, because this place is foul,” Goodnight said now. Maybe if he dwelled enough on the good thoughts, he could get his mind off the stench that was permanently embedded in his sinuses, probably. “Don’t mean to carry on so much, but on first sniff, I was just too overwhelmed to restrain myself.”

“MegaTokyo is worse,” Billy commented. “Higher population, more shit. And they have bats.”

“Bats?” Goodnight shuddered. Hadn’t even considered the possibility of animals loose in a sewer. You didn’t run into accidental animals much in the Oceanics, on account of being such isolated systems. That went double for flying creatures - you had to visit the Atlantis Zoo if you wanted to see a bat down here.

“Just little ones.” Billy held up his hand to indicate the size. “They sleep there during the day, fly up from the drains at night.”

“Billy, I already promised to stop complaining, you do not need to terrify me into silence with tales of the MegaTokyo Sewer Bats. However, I’ve now decided The Sewer Bats will be the name of my next band. You play banjo, by any chance? The Sewer Bats are gonna need a banjo player.”

Billy chuckled, which made Goodnight grin so bright he was surprised he wasn’t lighting up the tunnel. Like winning the damn lottery. “I played bass in a punk band in high school,” Billy said. “But no banjo.”

“Bass works! You know, my daddy used to say bass was what you wanted to play if you were just getting in a band to pick up girls. You’re playing the same four notes through the whole song, so you can scope out the crowd, pick one out, make some eye contact… girls, boys, those in between and not, it’d work like a charm on anyone. Or so I’ve been told, accordin’ to the bass player from my college electrofolk band.”

This was all true, every bit. But if someone were to put him under oath right this instant, and questioned him, he’d not be able to deny the...fishing expedition nature of his remarks. Indirectly asking, What sorts of people tickle your fancy? Light and friendly-like. Very subtle. Excellent work, Robicheaux.

Billy snorted - another victory! - but alas, rather than say anything further on the topic, he pointed to the intersection of sewer lines ahead. “We need to go left here,” he said, pointing to the raised walkway on the other side.

Taking the tiny disappointment with grace and the snort with pride, Goodnight followed Billy along. They were separated from the walkway by about two meters of water and muck - which Billy, naturally, leapt across with a graceful ease that took Goodnight’s breath away even as he envied it. He was fairly sure he could make it, but he was no Billy Rocks. He eyeballed the jump for a moment before he took a deep breath, instantly regretted that deep breath, and then just threw himself across.

For a second he was sure he’d made it, already thinking ha! Still got it with a spark of pride— but then his foot fumbled, he stumbled a bit on the landing, and then he was very much about to fall into the water and muck and every thought flew out of his head except oh God oh God I have made a mistake—

But then, this: A pair of strong arms. Rough, callused hands on his back. A controlled, easy strength that caught him and hauled him forward before he could actually fall.

Oh. Oh, that was very nice. Goodnight straightened up, thankful once again for the gloom hiding the blush on his cheeks. But when decorum would’ve dictated he separate from Billy once they were stabilized, he just...didn’t.

“Merci,” he said with a growing smile, and to his great pleasure found that he was getting a small one from Billy in return.

“Come on,” Billy said, stepping away first, taking the warmth and coiled strength of his arms with him. Goodnight shoved the disappointment away as soon as it arrived, but he doubted he’d ever be able to forget what it felt like to be in Billy Rocks’ embrace - not that it’d be a hardship to remember.

Billy’s voice dropped a notch as they moved forward. “We should be quiet now. Almost there.”

They reached the spot Billy was looking for a hundred or so meters down. He stopped walking and took what could have been mistaken for a gun from his belt. What the device actually was, Billy had explained earlier, was a modified ice-cutter like they used to cut through several feet of ice at once in the Arctic - except this one had a bit more punch. Billy’s was rigged to cut a perfect circle through several feet of metal and concrete, creating their entrance into GeneCorp from their position below.

Goodnight had never been much of a physical break-in artist, so this gear was new to him. It was fun to watch Billy use it, even when the bit of ceiling Billy cut through came crashing down with a foul-smelling splash.

Goodnight shook off his flinch and said, “All right, and the clock begins...now.” A timer popped up in Goodnight’s HUD, counting down 20 minutes until the next security sweep on the floor above. (It’d been child’s play to access guard rotations and patrol routes. For a corporation this big and secure, they really needed to educate their employees on watching their things better.) It wouldn’t be long before someone discovered their massive entranceway.

Billy had them equipped with laser ziplines, so they were near instantly flying up into GeneCorp’s parking area on glowing red threads. This was another new one for Goodnight, but even if it weren’t - some things just stayed exciting no matter what, like the joy of going somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, to do something you weren’t supposed to do. He was always gonna love the game even if he got out of it. Running something like this with Billy Rocks? It was all Goodnight could do not to whoop in exhilaration from the wind in his face and the sight of Billy smiling with more than his eyes.

Speaking of which: that son of a bitch was fast. By the time Goodnight got to the freight elevator (and it hadn’t taken him long!) Billy already had the elevator doors and top hatch open. He jumped up through the opening from flat feet like it was nothing - if Goodnight didn’t already know about the strength and speed mods, he’d surely know now, especially after Billy reached down and pulled him up one-handed. Like lifting a piece of paper. Impressive as hell.

(And yes, hotter than anything.)

The work was all silent now, but for the pop and whirr of ziplines firing, attaching, pulling them up to the second floor entrance. Billy hit the door-release and they were in. They’d show on cameras, but as a masked pair of nondescript shadows; just overzealous activists looking to make trouble. So long as they got the job done before security noticed, they were golden.

As predicted, they could walk right into the Marketing department. While Goodnight surveyed the lay of the land, Billy went straight past him to a bulky holoprojector, picking it up. Goodnight watched, brow cocked - and then Billy’s muscles flexed under his tight dark shirt and he tossed the thing across the room like a goddamn cereal box.

Something whirred faintly behind Goodnight - a motion-sensing cam orienting itself towards Billy, who was prying an entire workstation loose - and he found himself grinning like an idiot: good God, that man is strong. He stepped back against the wall, under the camera and out of its view. Grabbed a nearby chair to stand on, reached up to jimmy the back of the cam open, popped the bug inside - it clicked unobtrusively into place, and that was that part done and dusted, easy as pie.

He fired up his holodisplay for the next part: verifying the link he’d already set up between the bug and the ‘net. He’d done it a hundred times if he’d done it once, but there was always a chance...the display connected after a second, and Goodnight let out a rush of air and relief. Thanks be to the stars far above, there was the whole GeneCorp camera feed, spread out for him and running like a dream.

He flashed a V-for-Victory at Billy, who’d cheerfully moved on to spraying circuitpaint everywhere. “No More Mods, Stop Playing God” unfurled in lurid neon pink all over the wall. Jesus. It lit a spark along the already thrumming thrill in Goodnight’s blood: watching Billy thoroughly enjoy himself trashing a corporate office, chaotic energy and brilliant elegance in every way he moved, dark eyes lit with reflected, glittering pink glow. The cacophony and chorus of crashing furniture, the way Billy moved, the way he glanced back at Goodnight with a subtle but undeniable mirth in his eyes - even like this, pretending to be a common hooligan, he was fucking beautiful.

It was surreal; their entire lives culminating in this moment, coming together to do something as gloriously stupid and wild as this, together.

And it wasn’t over yet. Goodnight snapped the back of the camera shut and hopped down from his chair to do his part in faking the break-in: adding a little digital to their physical vandalism. Wouldn’t be difficult, but the little blue numbers steadily ticking down in his peripheral reminded him they needed to get in and get out fast. Getting caught by security would throw a massive wrench in their plans.

Which was why, despite knowing that it was not in any way a good idea, Goodnight did the fastest, most efficient thing he could think of to do: he sat down at a terminal and used the Owl to wetlink in.

Dangerous as hell, yes. But with it, he could fly through the system at the speed of thought with no need for pesky typing and tapping, and with only a few minutes left on the clock, he couldn’t waste any time. He wasn’t going deep, so he wouldn’t have to worry about anything like a VR trap here; he just needed to feel around, mess with some visible-but-useless stuff, and then get out. It would be fine.

Of course, like so many of Goodnight’s bad decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time, it wasn’t fine. Of-fucking-course this would be one of the times his fussy cybernetics would decide to up and start fussing. The scent of mint drifted past his nose: a familiar little smell-hallucination - an aura, the doc called it - that was always a sure sign he was about to pay the price for his bad decisions.

Sure enough, the throbbing started on the right side of his head, low-grade pain growing right around where the implant sat on the surface of his brain. From previous experience he knew it was gonna spread and escalate rapidly in the next few minutes, and he cursed under his breath as he tried to wrap things up while the pain started lancing through him.

He finished uploading his new “Fuck GeneCorp” lock screen to replace the “Better Living Through Technology!” that presently adorned displays across the firm, as well as the radical anti-cybernetic twenty-page manifesto set to auto-open and scroll upon start-up. Any other time, he’d’ve been proud - it was a heap of elaborate, flowery bullshit he’d been more than happy to write - but right now? It was all he could do to disconnect as fast as he could. Too late to head off the oncoming migraine, goddammit, but at least they could get going now before they were caught. Or his brain exploded.

“Let’s go,” he said, and winced again as he got to his feet, pain engulfing him so completely his knees near buckled. Fucking wonderful. Apparently this was gonna to be one of the bad ones, where every single movement made him feel like he had malicious elves hammering at the inside of his skull in unison. That meant vision trouble and nausea weren’t far off. Goodnight did his best to shove the pain aside as Billy came up to him and nodded towards the door; he barely had the ability to nod back.

They had just enough time to exit the same way they’d come in: out the door, down the elevator shaft, and back through their hole into the sewer. Goodnight was already struggling to keep his balance straight when he hit the ground in the shaft; by the time they were in the sewer, he was reeling worse than a drunk on the hard stuff. Billy swung effortlessly over to the walkway, but when Goodnight attempted to do the same, he was hit with a blinding wave of pain and nausea. Instead of landing neatly on the walkway against the wall, he slammed into the railing, only just missing falling into the muck. The impact felt like his bones were being shaken apart.

“Are you okay?” Billy asked from beside him, mask shoved up to get a better look. Goodnight could see the concern in his face, and thought it was rather sweet. Then he threw up on the floor.

“Fine,” he gasped after his stomach emptied itself, pulling his mask off and dropping it into the sewer behind him. He wiped his mouth and spat, grimacing at both the ever-growing waves of pain in his skull and the sour taste in his mouth. “I’m fine.” Nothing to be done about it now. He swung himself over the railing and started jogging down the walkway, trying to will the pain into not affecting him. Didn’t work, but it was enough to keep him moving forward.

“What’s wrong?” Billy asked, easily catching up with him. He was— the plan had been for them to split after they exited to confuse the trail. Billy was fast as anything, he could’ve sprinted all the way down the sewer and made that leap across already, but instead— he was running right behind Goodnight. If the pain wasn’t starting to make Goodnight feel like his skull was melting, he’d have smiled at the kindness.

“Cybernetic migraine,” Goodnight said, trying not to wince with every single strike of his feet against the metal walkway. He felt like it was clanging inside his head next to the malicious elves.

Then Billy grabbed Goodnight’s arm to pull past him. “Just follow me,” he said, and Goodnight had never been more grateful for anything in his life.

He couldn’t even think about how nice it’d been, to have Billy’s firm, warm hold on him. It was all he could do to focus on the collar of Billy’s shirt and keeping his feet moving. Did they turn left or right? Were they going the right way? How much time had passed? No idea. Just knew that whatever path Billy was taking them down, it didn’t involve any jumping. Thank all the stars and little fishes for that, because in his current state he’d fall right into the sewage.

Everything was whirling together in a haze of pain and nausea and little blank spots in his vision. When the time came to climb back up to the street, Goodnight bodily dragged himself up the ladder just praying he could get to solid ground without passing out. Even if passing out sounded splendid right now so long as the ground wasn’t too far away. Soon as he got himself home, he was gonna have that hypo of narcotryptan in his arm so fast the world might spin right off its axis.

Goodnight was dimly aware of Billy’s hand on his arm again as he got himself out of the sewer and into the alley, and of Billy guiding him to lean against a wall. He closed his eyes, shutting out the city lights. Too fucking bright, every sound amplified by a thousand, driving the pain further into his skull. Soon, he knew, the blind spots in his vision were gonna get larger and getting back home would be even harder. Had half a mind to just lie down here and go to sleep, because getting on a rickety, overcrowded tram and then riding up the cubes on his own bed made him want to throw up again just at the thought.

“Goodnight?”

He almost wished the smell aura would kick up again, maybe with something stronger. More mint. Because at least then he wouldn’t have to smell sewage. The fucking stench wasn’t helping his head any.

“Goodnight, look at me.”

Chances of getting caught went up the longer they stayed out here. But if he could just lay down in the dirt and grime, maybe security’d think he was just some homeless bum. Or a dead body. Didn’t matter, so long as they left him alone, and -

“Goody.”

He felt Billy’s hand on the side of his face, and that helped more with making him focus than hearing his name did. Still took him a few seconds to process Billy’s orders, like his thoughts were bites of a waffle he was pulling across a syrupy plate; in the end, the only thought he could dredge up was about how warm Billy Rocks’ hand was against his cheek, safe and secure and comforting, and how he wanted it there forever. He didn’t especially want to open his eyes, because the damn lights would still be there, but hey - at least he’d get to look at Billy Rocks. Up close and personal, even, and not in a sewer. That had to count for something.

He opened his eyes slowly, his entire head feeling like it would shake apart at any moment. Worth it, though, to see Billy; hand still cupping Goodnight’s cheek, mouth slightly parted, usually stoic dark eyes now soft with concern. Goodnight felt only a little guilty at making Billy this worried. The rest of him could only think about two things: how he wanted to bury his face in Billy’s hands and sleep for days, and how much more bearable and beautiful the nighttime city lights were when they were reflected in Billy’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Goodnight said. He knew this was a really inconvenient time to get knocked flat by the results of his own stupid choices. If they got caught because of a stupid migraine? He didn’t even know what he would do.

“It’s okay,” Billy said, and Goodnight wanted to tell him that it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t, but Billy kept right on talking. “I’m going to take you home. All right?”

Home. Just the thought of it mixed with the low, concerned tone of Billy’s voice knocked the fight out of him. Goodnight didn’t have it in him to argue. “All right,” he sighed, and closed his eyes again. Billy touched his shoulder to nudge him away from the wall, then slipped an arm around Goodnight’s waist to guide him down the street. It was nice, even through the blur of pain. He hadn’t had anyone walk him home in a long time.

“It’s not always this bad,” he said, because he didn’t want Billy thinking that he was always one bad click away from collapse. “Sometimes it’s just a nasty headache and I can power through.This one, though, goddamn. Came on fast and hit hard, and I’m glad you’re overcome with the spirit of generosity this evening, because I’m starting to go blind without the benefit of enjoying several shots of whiskey first.”

“Is there anything that helps?” Billy asked.

“Hypo of narcotryptan usually does the trick,” Goodnight said. “I’ve got some at home. It doesn’t exactly stop the pain, but it does make me stop caring about it much. Usually pass right out after.”

“Good.” Billy had successfully gotten them to the nearest transit station and was now guiding Goodnight onto a tram heading downcity, making Goodnight wonder how the hell they’d gotten here this far and this fast. Then again, his perception of time was currently shot to shit, so. He didn’t even realize Billy was talking again until a second after the man’d started. “It’s close to morning. I think we should give you tomorrow to sleep this off.”

Protest immediately gathered in Goodnight’s throat - he didn’t want to delay the job; he hated being a liability. But a wave of agony swelled right as he was thinking about finishing the job in this state, and he swallowed the complaint down.

Billy was right. He wasn’t gonna be any good tomorrow and they couldn’t afford mistakes. Last thing he wanted was to fuck up and get himself caught. Billy caught.

“Probably so,” Goodnight reluctantly conceded. He slumped down into a seat and put his hand behind his head so he could lean back without the window rattling against his skull. He couldn’t wait to get home to his pillows.

Mariana’s tram system ran fast. It didn’t take too long to get to Goodnight’s stop, though the migraine worsened anyway, what with all the movement and shaking and people. Goodnight couldn’t stop the wince when he got to his feet, but at least he could enjoy having Billy’s arm around him again as they walked through the station and out to the street.

“You mind a quick stop at the cornershop?” Goodnight asked.

“Home first,” Billy said. “We’re not going in a shop looking like we just robbed some place.”

“Oh, right.”

Just the sight of the door was a relief when they made it up the cubes. Getting inside was even better. Goodnight sagged back against the wall as the lights came on and the door shut - he wanted to fall straight into bed, but no way these clothes were getting anywhere near his sheets. They reeked of sewage and vomit. Maybe he’d toss them out the window rather than into the laundry. Standing was unpleasant, though, so he let himself slide slowly down the wall to sit on the floor. Just a little bit of sitting, he promised himself - just a little, and then he’d make himself get up and change clothes.

“Thank you,” he finally thought to say, cracking open his eyes to see Billy somehow still there, looking at him with those soft, dark eyes that made Goodnight feel a little like melting. He could’ve left at any point. He could still leave. But he hadn’t, and at the very least, he was owed thanks.

“What do you need?” Billy asked. He came down to Goodnight’s level with a flat-footed squat, arms resting on his knees. The concern on his face made Goodnight smile despite the pain in his head. It wasn’t much of a smile - half of one, at best, just a little lift on one side, but his face was trying its best.

“If you’re willing to play guardian angel a little more, could you grab a hypo out of the drawer below the pantry cabinet?” Smiling was easier to do with Billy Rocks around. “And turn the lights and temperature to 15 and 20?” He lifted his hand to point at the control panel half a meter above his head, right next to the door.

“Okay.” Billy stood, and within seconds the apartment took on a pleasant cave-like atmosphere. Cool air kicked in and the biolights turned down to a low blue that reminded Goodnight of the backstage running lights at the theater where his parents had worked. The change in atmosphere made him slouch even more against the wall, relief palpable in his system.

“What did you want from the cornershop?” Billy asked as he went to the drawer Goodnight had indicated.

“Pretzels, if you would,” Goodnight said. “Salty carbs help with the nausea.”

Billy was back quickly with the hypo, and as Goodnight reached up to take it, he realized the tremor in his hands was back. Of course it was, because if one thing went wrong, everything that possibly could go wrong, would go wrong. Billy looked worried by that, too, with a little furrow in his lovely brow, gorgeous mouth downturned. It was enough to shatter a man’s heart, Goodnight thought, that faint look of concern paired with the material expression of kindness in his hand. At least the tremor wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t take hold of the hypo and press it to his arm. He thought Billy looked about as relieved as he felt when the needle slid home.

“Thank you,” Goodnight said again. “And now we’ve got about twenty minutes before I’m borderline useless for anything but sleep or reciting twentieth-century villanelles.”

“Then you should change clothes and take a shower, if you can stand it,” Billy said. “I will get your pretzels.” He took off his tool belt and set it on the countertop, instantly going from ‘obvious criminal’ to ‘just another guy dressed in black.’

As much as he was ever gonna look like ‘just another guy,’ anyway. Even after all that running and jumping, he looked like a damn work of art. It was his base state of being. “You are a prince among men, Billy Rocks, and I will forever owe you a debt of gratitude for this kindness.”

For all of his dramatic rhetorical flourish, Goodnight was rewarded a faint smile and an “I’ll be right back,” and then he was gone, leaving Goodnight to drag himself upright, undress, and stumble his way to the shower.

His usual temp setting felt too hot, but he was too exhausted to bother changing it. He was still getting blind spots if he tried to focus too hard on anything, though even that didn’t stop him from scrubbing hard enough to near take his skin off. Thank god Billy hadn’t left him to fall in the sewer.

Or left him at all, really. He could’ve ditched Goodnight at any point - could’ve been long gone by the time GeneCorp security found Goodnight, arrested him, and took all the heat off Billy, who’d have the easiest time in the world waltzing back in once everyone was looking the other way. If Billy was the cold, ruthless criminal his reputation said he was, he would have - and should have - abandoned Goodnight.

But he hadn’t. Hadn’t left Goodnight behind not even once. He’d been right there with him, by his side, every step of the way. He’d guided Goodnight here himself, turned down the lights for him, crouched down to meet Goodnight’s eyes with a face so beautiful and concerned that Goodnight could write sonnets about it, his hand so warm on Goodnight’s cheek and so perfectly sculpted to fit around it and oh, lord.

Goodnight leaned his forehead against the shower wall as his heart thrummed, grinning like a fool to himself with no one around to see, the warmth in his chest threatening to spill with just the memory of Billy’s arm around his waist. Was it possible to fall in love in two weeks, given a sufficiently attractive target who rescued you from sewers and migraines? Sure seemed so. Even if it wasn’t, he decided to enjoy the warm fuzzy feelings anyway; they were way more fun than thinking about the pain, his deteriorating cybernetics, or the way the medication was starting to make his thoughts float.

The warm, floaty cloud helped him flop out of the shower, into an old, worn t-shirt and shorts, and onto the welcoming softness of his bed. He was lying there in some dreamy state between dozing and half-awake when Billy returned. With three bags of pretzels. If Goodnight wasn’t in love before, he was now.

“I was not sure what kind you like, so I got three,” Billy said. He came to sit on the edge of the bed – awfully familiar, but it wasn’t like there was much of anyplace else to sit with the apartment in this configuration. “Big ones, little ones, and square ones.”

Goodnight gave him a sleepy smile, one he honestly couldn’t help with all the softness coursing through his heart, and pulled himself upright to lean back against the wall behind the bed. “Merci beaucoup, my knight in shining armor. And sorry about… all this,” Goodnight said, gesturing vaguely at himself, his bed, his pretzels, and his life, and then closed his eyes and let his head rest back against the wall. Here he was, marinating in the consequences of his own stupid choices, completely unable to do a single damn thing about the fact that the handsomest man under the sea was right here on his bed. What a godawful mess. An absolute travesty.

“It’s fine,” Billy said. And when Goodnight glanced over, he genuinely didn’t look annoyed by any of it. If anything, there was just a little trace of worry remaining in his eyes. Goodnight hated it, almost. Wanted to reach over, to where the dimness of the room and the soft blue light cast Billy in a gentle glow, half in shadow, eyes beautiful and sad, and increasingly messy hair somehow still looking immaculate. The loose, wavy strands falling across his face only made him look all the more handsome. Made Goodnight’s chest ache with a fondness he didn’t know he was capable of.

Something must’ve shown in his own gaze, because the corner of Billy’s mouth ticked up ever so slightly and his shoulders dropped. One of the unpleasant knots in Goodnight’s gut unraveled, spooling out into something warm instead.

It stayed warm even after Billy broke the silence. “The Owl causes this?”

“Mmhm. Goes great with the Swift giving me the shakes. Beats having it shut my brain down altogether, though.”

Though, with his luck, he fully expected that to be not too far off. Probably’d be using the Owl to check out something inane on the ‘net and then end up with the seizure to end all seizures, life expectancy cut short by thirty years.

Still. For all the stress and pain of this stupid job - it was worth it to have met the man seated before him, looking at Goodnight like he was more than some washed-up hacker with a ticking time bomb attached to his brain. Goodnight couldn’t help but smile at that.

Then, out of nowhere, Billy dropped his own small bomb between them.

“I heard you were the hacker who brought the Archer Corporation down.”

Goodnight flinched, then flinched again at a fresh wave of pain slapping him upside the head. Archer. He could’ve happily spent the rest of his life never hearing the name again. Not that he wasn’t proud of the work he’d done, he just would’ve welcomed the plague with more open arms than for any mention of Archer Corporation.

Still, Billy had done so much for him. Hauled him through sewers, all the way to his apartment, and bought him three kinds of pretzels. Three. It wasn’t even as if the story was a secret; half of Goodnight’s clientele hired him because they’d heard of his work on Archer Corp. If all Billy wanted for being nothing less than unbelievably amazing was the true story straight from the source, then he’d gladly swallow the sour taste in his mouth and lay it out for him.

“You heard right,” Goodnight began, sighing. “When the news got out that they’d known the whole time how dangerous the Owl was, I decided to go for some payback. I got it, but it didn’t come cheap - call it an object lesson in not taking the work so personally that you get sloppy.”

Billy’s brows rose. They were as finely sculpted as the rest of the man. “You got caught?”

Goodnight nodded - started to, anyway. His head still hurt too much to move much. “Yeah, in a VR trap. You know what that is?”

“Only sort of.”

Normally Goodnight would’ve skipped the explanation because recalling it made him shake for a whole different reason. But he was committed now, and it’d be a hell of a lot easier to do with heavy painkillers in his system.

“A VR trap’s about the best defense there is against a hacker who’s wetlinked into your system. Works by giving them feedback to trick their brain, then locks them into an interactive holoprogram that stalls them out. They get stuck in place, security tracks their physical location, and then it’s either an arrest or execution.” He said it as casually as he could. Waved his hand weakly a few times just to sell it. “Think of it as a mousetrap, except the mousetrap can be anything that'll keep the mouse in place. Sometimes it's just a virtual cell, or some of the more sophisticated ones try to distract the mouse and make them think they’re still working through the system.”

Billy frowned. Goodnight wanted to thumb away the crease between his brows, and also possibly forget this topic forever. “So you were stuck in that mousetrap.”

Goodnight shrugged, as if his pulse weren’t speeding up from the memory alone.

“Yeah. Wish I got the prison cell, though. Archer apparently had a real sadist design theirs - I got more-or-less stuck in a torture chamber for what felt like years. Was probably only a coupla minutes in real time - though who’m I to say, I was a little distracted.” Goodnight laughed without any humor, smiling wryly at Billy and hoping to God his voice didn’t waver as much as his hands were right now. “Lucky for me, my buddy Sam happened by and got me out before they could physically catch and torture me, but neither the trap nor the abrupt disconnect were any good for my brain. You’re basically chatting to a flash drive that got yanked out too fast and then run through the laundry.”

He tried to offer Billy a grin, but it barely made it to surface when he couldn’t read the expression on Billy’s face. He guessed it was deliberately blank – a thinking expression, perhaps. Hopefully not thinking about cancelling this whole working relationship, or forgoing the job altogether, not that Goodnight could blame him if he was. It wasn’t as if Goodnight was unaware that he was a mess; especially now, with a burning lump in his throat and his hands shaking and something shameful threatening to spill from behind his eyes at just the thought of torture, endless nightmares, blood and slaughter and viscera and his sister screaming for him to just end it, just kill her, Sam beating him half to death, Goodnight thinking he was finally done and over and getting out but it’d just start over and over and over and over and -

“I always thought McCann was an asshole,” Billy said at last.

Goodnight’s thoughts screeched to a halt. That was...not the response Goodnight had been expecting. Wasn’t even on the list of things he might’ve expected, in fact. Lost between blinding pain and narcotic bliss, Goodnight struggled a little more than usual to put the pieces together, and these pieces didn’t fit at all. The hell was Billy going on about?

The Arctic Fox in Goodnight’s chest kicked into high gear, its light glowing brighter on his back as it transferred heat energy out of Goodnight’s body. He leaned forward to get his back off the wall, drawing his knees up, resting his forearms on them. Not that it helped any; he still ended up peering up a little to look at Billy, confused and troubled, questioning.

Billy seemed hesitant to even look him in the eyes, but Goodnight got his answer when Billy finally did.

“I used to work for Archer,” Billy continued quietly, after a few beats of silence. Goodnight snapped his head right back up to look at him. “Physical security. I didn’t know what IT was doing, or what kind of security McCann was putting up there. But I suppose I still helped you get into trouble anyway: I was the one who blew the whistle on the Owl scandal.”

“What?” Goodnight brows shot up. “And you’re still alive? Shit, how many assassins’d they send after you?”

“Three, before I went underground,” Billy said, and gave Goodnight a ghost of a smile. “Only one since you trashed most of their system.”

Goodnight stared again in wonder. He wondered how many times Billy Rocks could make him do that - it didn’t scare him as much as it ought to, the thought that he’d love to stick around and find out. But Lord, how dare a man like that look at him like this? Like he felt guilty about blowing the whistle and saving hundreds, maybe thousands of people from dying? Just because he’d indirectly caused Goodnight a little pain? Goodnight wanted to shake him, almost, tell him a little migraine once in awhile is better than a premature death, you glorious fool.

“Guess we started helping each other out before we even met, huh?” Goodnight said instead, giving him a tired but sincere little smile back. Billy met his eyes, and Goodnight didn’t dare look away. It felt like a little touch of destiny, a thread connecting two people and drawing them together. Goodnight wasn’t sure how much he believed in anything like that, but he liked the sound of it regardless.

Billy kept his gaze on Goodnight, and like a flower slowly blooming, Billy’s shoulders began to relax. “Guess so,” Billy said with no small amount of sincerity, looking at Goodnight with an expression so abruptly tender that Goodnight’s heart clenched at the sight. As if he weren’t already stunning, breathtaking.

Billy reached out, then, and pushed back some of the hair that had fallen into Goodnight’s face. Rough fingers against Goodnight’s cheek, gentle and delicate, like Goodnight was something, someone worth protecting. His chest trembled with it, heart and lungs threatening to burst, with too much affection and fondness to hold at once. Billy truly was a wonder, Goodnight dimly thought through the increasing narcotic haze, and it was a damn shame he was in no shape to do any more than lean his head into the touch like a cat, feeling the calloused warmth, committing it to memory, and wishing he had the strength and the courage to turn his head a little further to kiss the palm that held him.

“You should sleep,” Billy said softly, his hand still resting at Goodnight’s temple. His thumb stroked the soft hair there; Goodnight would’ve purred, were he able to. “Big day soon.”

“Hah. Right.” Goodnight chuckled – big day was something of an understatement. They’d either succeed, or the death that’d been chasing the both of them for so long would finally catch up.

When Billy slowly (reluctantly? If Goodnight could indulge his own selfish thoughts) took his hand away, Goodnight mourned the loss more than he thought he ever would. But Billy was right. He did need sleep if he was going to be of any use, and despite how much he would have liked to lean deeper into Billy and curl up around him, Goodnight had enough of his good sense left to make him stretch out normally and flop over onto his side. They still had a job to do, after all; one that he was going to try his damndest to see through to the end, if only because once this was all over, he was definitely going to ask Billy Rocks to dinner.

Once he went horizontal, it was confirmed that lying down and heading toward sleep was definitely a good idea. Goodnight yawned as soon as he hit the pillow. “I’ll drop you a text when I wake up, confirm I’m good to go.”

“Good.” Billy softly patted Goodnight’s shoulder and stood. Goodnight wondered if Billy’s hand staying a beat longer than necessary was real, or just wishful, sleep-dazed thinking. “Sleep. Eat your pretzels.”

“Mm… maybe,” Goodnight mumbled. Now that his head was down, the narcotic-induced sleep was catching up fast. “À demain, mon cher.”

“Until tomorrow.”

Footsteps faded. A door closed, shortly after. Goodnight’s last thought before dropping off to sleep was this: he couldn’t see it, but he thought maybe, just maybe, that when Billy replied, he heard a smile.

* * * * *

Fourteen hours later, Billy’s dinner was interrupted by the sound of his mini-tablet’s text notification. He couldn’t ignore the spark of happiness that lit when he saw that it was, as he hoped, from Goodnight, and contained just what Billy wanted to see.

Bonjour - time heals all wounds, it seems, or at least sleep does. I’ll have no trouble working tomorrow morning. Shall we meet at 0900 to run our checklist and begin?

Billy couldn’t help but smile to himself, reading it. Trust Goodnight to send a multi-sentence text message, complete with compound sentences and proper punctuation, despite coming off what had looked like a truly miserable night. Too bad he wasn’t calling Billy mon cher this morning, Billy thought, but he was still fairly sure that the sleepy mumbling in the wee hours of the morning wouldn’t be the last time he heard that. He hoped so, anyway.

Billy fired off a quick response, confirming the time and suggesting a corner a few cubes north of the target for a meeting place. Then he placed his mini-tablet down and promptly went through his own private little feelings crisis, because he had rather more feelings than he’d expected going into this. That left him with a problem, because he’d never been especially good at managing feelings beyond just tamping them down out of the way where no one else would see them. He’d grown up poor, a Korean immigrant in the vast metropolis of MegaTokyo, and then migrated down to the underwater megacity of Mariana where he’d risen to the top, briefly. Just for a moment. It seemed so far away now; that short, short time when he wasn’t Billy Rocks, the assassin - just Lee Sang, the best physical security man in the business.

He wasn’t merely fast and deadly, though his collection of cybernetic enhancements probably would’ve let him fight a grizzly bear and win; he was smart. He could spot trouble before it could start, look at the big picture, and design processes and procedures that meant he rarely had to use force on the job. For a while, he belonged somewhere, was accepted, was welcomed - for his usefulness, if nothing else. Lee Sang was brilliant; a treasured employee. A part of something big and whole, even if just on a corporate scale.

It was a pity, almost, that Lee Sang had a conscience. He found out about the dangerous instability of the Archer Corporation’s Owl wetlink, and he’d sent an anonymous tip to the press. When the first assassin came, he’d realized that the tip hadn’t been as anonymous as he thought. It wasn’t until after Billy had sent both the second and third assassins on to their eternal reward that he decided it was time to go underground. Leaving the city would have been best, but the corporations all had eyes on the transit in and out of Mariana. He knew for sure that Archer did - he’d arranged that security measure himself. If he wanted out, he’d need to lay low for a while, disappear under their noses. And there was no place better for disappearing than the Phos.

Lee Sang disappeared too, that day. As with any connection he ever had with colleagues, and friends - anyone he used to know, anywhere he was once welcomed.

He was a perpetual outsider. He’d learned early that the safest option for him was to keep his walls up and protect himself. Don’t let them see you affected - not hurt, not happy, not angry, not anything that could potentially be used against you. He made exceptions occasionally, for a very few close friends and family - but Billy hadn’t expected Goodnight Robicheaux to become one of them.

It started from the first time Goodnight made him laugh. He’d thought Goodnight was attractive before, but that didn’t mean anything, really. But then he’d made Billy smile, made him laugh - really laugh - and that surprised Billy more than anything really had in… a while.

And Goodnight made it seem so easy. Made talking and laughing and joking so easy, even for Billy, who’d once been described as having the emotional depth of a frying pan. Goodnight, with his ridiculously expressive blue eyes and his smile that could melt butter - he came up and talked to Billy like a friend. Like a partner. Not Billy Rocks, the assassin, the mercenary - just Billy, who also just did wildly dangerous shit on the side. Goodnight looked at him without fear or judgment - just acceptance and warmth, kindness. Amazement. He made relaxing around him so simple, with conversation that flowed easily - and more than anything? Goodnight seemed like he wanted to be there, at Billy’s side, wholly and genuinely.

The man went slipping past his carefully constructed defenses with wry humor, wicked skills, and surprising strength in the face of adversity. Billy had never had a cybernetic migraine himself, but he had a decent enough academic understanding of the intense pain Goodnight was in as they made their exit from the GeneCorp building. The fact that he hadn’t passed out was honestly pretty impressive.

What was most startling about that whole debacle, though, was how genuinely worried Billy had been. Not about the job, not about himself, but about Goodnight.

Billy knew what kind of damage the Owl could do to people. He saw firsthand how dangerous they were, and he’d spent that whole journey to Goodnight’s apartment afraid he was going to see the man drop dead. Now that Billy had gotten to know Goodnight, knew how Goodnight had gone after the old employer who’d repeatedly tried to kill him, and knew that the Archer Corporation had cost Goodnight just as much as it had him, Billy found himself not just liking Goodnight, but feeling protective of him. Goodnight was obviously smart and competent, but it didn’t take a genius to see that the man was bitter. Lonely. The kind of bitter and lonely that resonated somewhere within the heart Billy had tried to bury after he left his old identity behind.

The part that surprised Billy was the fact that he wanted to ease some of that, if he could, the same way Goodnight did for him just by making him laugh. The last time he’d wanted to do anything like that, he was still surfaceside, with his sister. Whether he’d planned on it or not, he’d come to care for Goodnight a lot on a relatively short acquaintance, more deeply than Billy ever thought he would. It felt unfamiliar, strange, and to be perfectly honest, scary as shit.

Billy picked up his last piece of nigiri and looked at it like the little creation of salmon and rice would have some helpful advice to offer. Unsurprisingly, the sushi did not seem to have an opinion on whether he ought to take a chance on Goodnight Robicheaux. The rice didn’t shout ‘He’s a hot white mess, keep your distance!’ nor did the salmon cry ‘Ask that beautiful brilliant creature to marry you immediately!’ Tapping the fish delicately to the little dish of soy sauce didn’t inspire it to be any more forthcoming with suggestions, so Billy popped the nigiri in his mouth and resolved to figure it out on his own.

Goodnight, he suspected, would have held a whole conversation out loud with the sushi, probably while doing a silly voice for it. And Billy would have laughed until he couldn’t breathe. All right, so maybe he was leaning a little more toward Team Salmon.

Fuck, he really was screwed.

Billy was still considering his options when he went home for the night. He packed his proper and professional tablet bag still thinking about it, assembling all his required gear and costume changes for the next day. Goodnight was still at the back of his mind while he double-checked his gear list and went over the building plans one more time; he reviewed his escape route, and spent half that time thinking of how Goodnight looked after Billy came back from his pretzel run - soft, sleepy, with a smile that looked honestly fucking beautiful. Billy almost never thought of people in those words. He had a hit of sedatol before he went to bed, just because he needed his brain to shut up enough that he could get to sleep before two in the morning, and still fell asleep to the memory of Goodnight’s face in his palm, warm and tender enough to hurt.

Come morning, all he had to do was wash up, fix his hair, and see if he still remembered how to get into a suit. It had been a long time since jackets and ties were a regular part of his life, or at least it felt like a long time.

He didn’t miss it anymore, not really. A part of him still missed how it felt to be welcomed in something big, something whole - but in the end, he was only welcomed for as long as he was useful to the company anyway. Billy had gotten to like being his own boss now, choosing his own clients and making his own rules. Choosing his own colleagues was a nice plus, too - maybe he wouldn’t ever have lunchtime coffee breaks with random coworkers anymore, but he wasn’t ever truly close to them anyway. His friends were more acquaintances than anything else - and he’d never have to work with the likes of McCann again as long as he stayed out of the corporate world.

He hadn’t thought about McCann in a long time, not until Goodnight had started telling the story of the VR trap on the old Archer network. Billy had always thought the guy was an asshole, but if he’d realized McCann was that level of asshole, Billy would’ve made sure he killed the old head of Information Security on the way out. Even now, Billy was considering the idea of looking McCann up and then putting him down. It might not get rid of Goodnight’s physical or mental trauma, but it would certainly make the world a better place in general.

Billy looked in the mirror, straightening the knot in his tie and checking the fall of his hair. Of course he didn’t want to be too noticeable, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t look nice. As a final touch, he slid his sharpened titanium steel binyeo into his hair - he never used it as a load-bearing hair pin, but he liked having it on hand in case of emergency. The Assassin cybernetic mods in his wrists only held a few blades, and today one of them was loaded with non-lethal knockout darts. If he ran out, he wanted to be prepared with something a little more multi-use.

He arrived at the designated corner right on time, and felt something unfamiliarly warm jump in his chest at the sight of Goodnight waiting for him - and not just because Goodnight had put in a similar effort at looking nice. Possibly even more of an effort, judging by the result. Goodnight had his hair slicked back, beard neatly trimmed, a high-collared black topcoat emphasizing his shoulders, gray trousers skimming his legs just right… The warmth in Billy’s chest spread dangerously to his gut. Goodnight Robicheaux was just determined to find new ways to be distracting, it seemed.

At least Billy could take some consolation in recognizing that he was clearly affecting Goodnight in a similar fashion. Goodnight was staring blatantly, giving Billy a long once-over that turned into a twice-over, and grinning bright as surfaceside sunshine. It made Billy struggle to stifle the smile that threatened to crack - preening and stupidly giddy in equal measure. Asking Goodnight if he liked what he saw wasn’t even remotely necessary.

The smile didn’t fade as Billy got closer, Goodnight nodding to Billy’s bag. “Got the distraction?”

“Present and prepared,” Billy replied, at least trying to keep his cool. “Have all your changes?”

“All set.” Goodnight smiled as he slightly lifted his very professional-looking briefcase-tablet bag. “Got yours?”

“In with the rest,” Billy confirmed. “Badge?”

“Farewell Robbychucks is ready to report for duty!” Goodnight replied cheerfully.

“As is Banh Mi Stone.” Billy snorted a little laugh again. Those names were so stupid; he loved them.

He also loved something else - someone else, his brain piped up for the briefest fraction of a second before Billy quickly shoved it away deep into the recesses of his mind. He’d already dealt with Feelings yesterday. He didn’t need more world-shaking revelations right now - even if they weren’t exactly new.

“Shall we, then?” Goodnight gestured to the street and bowed like a gentleman about to escort his partner onto the ballroom floor.

That made Billy grin, too, or maybe it was just the fact that they were ready to start the fun part: fooling idiots, kicking ass, stealing from a tech giant, and making a pile of money.

“Let’s dance.”

They stepped out into the street and melted into the crowd of Mariana’s morning commute. Rush hour in this city started around 0700, just after the artificial sunrise at the top of the sphere, and carried on until close to 1100. It was more like a rush three-hours, which would resume once more around 1600 when the first office folk started for home. Pedestrians filled the sidewalks, zipper bikes filled the streets, and the tram station let out another mass of people every five minutes on the dot. They came and went in shops and cafes, filled the offices of tech designers, banks, and advertising agencies, and swirled all through the upper city like the schools of fish in the ocean around them.

GeneCorp stood right in the middle of it all: 128 floors of technical expertise and corporate greed. And this time, rather than cutting a hole in the basement, Goodnight and Billy walked straight through the front door.

No one questioned another set of business types coming in and swiping their badges. They got on the elevator with a few legitimate GeneCorp employees, and even up close like this, no one batted an eye - in a sea of corporate suits, Goodnight and Billy were just another pair of featureless faces. Goodnight was even double-selling the act by pretending to mess around on his mini-tab like half of everyone else in the lift, poker face near impeccable considering how expressive he was every other time. Billy decided then and there that even if romance didn’t work out with Goodnight, he definitely wanted to keep working with the man. Having a hacker and social engineering expert on deck smoothed over situations that Billy would have just fought his way through, and Billy knew that he could fill in gaps in Goodnight’s skills, as well. They were both fine criminals on their own, but as a team they could be nigh unstoppable.

Just before they exited on the fourth floor, Goodnight’s right pupil lit up red. To anyone else in the elevator, he’d look like he was just checking his email; Billy knew he was actually starting the routine that would take out the cameras. This was when the danger started, because it would be GeneCorp’s first alert that something was wrong. It would take their security department some time to figure out just what had happened, though, and longer to fix it - Goodnight had made sure of that. Still, as of now, they were officially on the timer.

Reaching the Access Control office gave them no trouble at all. There were helpful little signs pointing the way to it, even. Upon reaching the room, Billy was pleased to find that there were only two men working there, and that they were both clearly just badge-creating and identity-verifying minions, not any sort of serious security personnel.

“Good morning, gents,” Goodnight said with a smile, and in that second that both men were looking at him, Billy fired a drugged dart into one man’s chest, and then the other’s.

Billy always hated to drug people. It wasn’t good for them in general, he could never guess what someone might turn out to be violently allergic to, the fall to the floor could do damage in and of itself, and he objected on principle to messing with people’s minds. Nonetheless, pretty much everyone was violently allergic to a blade through the throat, and they needed the badge minions silenced quickly. A little somnaline would take care of that without Billy being obligated to kill a couple of worker-bees. Killing executives, decision-makers, people who were trying to kill him, Billy was fine with all that, but as much as possible he avoided killing people who were just making a living like everybody else.

The drones fell unceremoniously, and Billy was already finishing up securing the unconscious badge minions’ hands and feet with zipties by the time Goodnight made his way to the Access Control terminal.

“Goddamn you are fast!” Goodnight laughed as he worked through the badge access program, Billy allowing the little flare of pride at the acknowledgement. The cooling system in Goodnight’s chest was glowing bright, and Billy could hear it working from his spot a few feet away. He kept an eye on the door, tamping down the adrenaline rushing through his veins. High-risk jobs were exciting, but keeping the excitement under control was vital. Getting caught up in how much fun you were having was a good way to get careless, and in a job like this, carelessness could kill.

Billy alternated his gaze between the entrance and Goodnight, who grabbed up two blank badges and loaded them into the reader, typing quickly to fill them out with a very boring set of fake names so he could set the new badges to get them into R&D. He was concentrating, completely focused on the work and looking steadily more grim as he went. “Merde. Needs supervisor permission.”

“Can you do that?” Billy asked. He didn’t know the first thing about this part of the job, so it was a relief when Goodnight flashed him a quick grin from behind the monitor.

“I can do anything,” he said. “Just gotta work around a thing or two.”

And then it became less of a relief for Billy when he saw Goodnight wetlink into the terminal.

“Is that a good idea?” Billy asked, because he understood the need for speed, but he also knew exactly how risky it was. Last time, after all, this had gone rather badly - and unlike last time, he couldn’t just haul Goodnight by the waist out with him and back home.

“Not really!” Goodnight cheerfully replied. “But… now we’ve got our badge access.” That was the advantage of the Owl or any other wetlink - when the brain was hooked directly into a system, a hacker could work as fast as any computer. Billy just hoped his partner would get away without hurting himself this time. Goodnight looked okay, at least, as he disconnected; there was none of the strain around his eyes that Billy had seen on their last adventure. So far, anyway.

“Feeling all right?” Billy asked.

“Fine as frog hair,” Goodnight replied, though he didn’t quite sound it. Not that he sounded like he was in pain either. More than anything he sounded troubled, and given how much trauma was associated with wetlinking for Goodnight, Billy supposed it made sense that he wouldn’t like doing it much.

Billy easily caught the badge Goodnight threw to him, and they began their costume change. The suits came off, quickly discarded and replaced with the denim and the cowl-hooded sweatshirts with too many zippers that would let them fade into the tech nerds on the 17th floor. Goodnight ruffled his hand through his hair, taking it quickly from corporate to casually messy, and Billy handcombed a few loose messy strands out of his own. They stuffed their first outfits into a cabinet, and then they were ready to make for their next destination.

They slid through the hallways with no trouble, ducked into the elevator, and put Goodnight’s work to the test. Both of them were holding their breath as Goodnight swiped his new badge over the elevator reader and pressed the button for 17… and they released the breath in unison as the button lit up and the elevator began moving.

Everything was going well. So incredibly fucking well actually, that it was beginning to make Billy paranoid. Yes, it was good that the job was running like clockwork, but the longer that went on, the more Billy worried that the ‘something that inevitably went wrong’ would become ‘something that went incredibly, impressively, deadly awful’. He’d never had a job go completely perfectly before, and there was no way one this complicated should be the first.

Billy mentally prepared himself for the next task ahead. Walk into R&D without making any fuss, let Goodnight create a little distraction, and then toss the gas canister into the vent system that he’d mapped out before his initial run at the job. Then it was just a matter of finding the drive and getting out. All easier said than done, of course, but at least on the face of it, everything about it was simple.

Walking into R&D was as easy as walking in the front door had been. Billy swiped his badge and opened the door, letting Goodnight walk in ahead of him. In a firm this size, people were used to seeing coworkers they’d never met before, even in their own departments. The heavily techy types, luckily, weren’t likely to stroll up and start introducing themselves. In Billy’s experience, Goodnight’s status as a sociable, extroverted hacker was an anomaly. Sliding through the desks and lab tables to the back wall took no trouble at all, and while Billy continued toward the vent, Goodnight put himself between Billy and the closest desk.

“Pardon me, miss, and I hope this doesn’t sound creepy, but is that Clementine California you’re wearing?” Goodnight asked the young woman at the desk. Apparently it was, because the two of them launched into a detailed discussion of parfumerie as Billy surreptitiously detached the cover from the vent. The claws of the Takahashi Lion mod made for very handy emergency screwdrivers; Billy used his index finger claw to release the two top screws and make enough space for his gas canister. He reminded himself to ask later how in the hell Goodnight knew enough about perfume to discuss top notes and design houses.

For now though, he just primed the gas canister, placed it, and popped the vent cover right back on. Goodnight was still chattering about the fascinating history of Penhaligon’s Luna, and no one had noticed Billy’s quick work. Goodnight was in fact still holding his perfume conversation when the green gas began to filter into the room and the alarm began blaring.

Chaos ensued. With the good sense that very smart people confronted with chemical spill alarm and a gas that looked a hell of a lot like chlorine had, the researchers scrambled to get the hell out. Goodnight and Billy shared the briefest of looks and then proceeded to get the hell in.

People rushed out in a sea while Billy and Goodnight weaved their way in as quickly as possible, Goodnight rushing to one corner of the place while Billy ducked into another. Neither of them knew exactly where to find what they were looking for, so they were opening drawers and cabinets, picking locks on boxes, essentially turning the place upside down with the greatest speed possible. Billy’s pulse was racing as he started tearing drawers open with sheer strength rather than taking any extra time to pick them - this was the one part of the job they couldn’t have prepared for, finding a tiny forbidden flash drive among a sea of other documents and bullshit. The entire time, his gut churned with a sense of dread, of what felt a lot like impending doom, and what was definitely his internal timer quickly running out of seconds to click down.

And then, Billy’s gut was proven right: things went wrong.

Very wrong, very quickly.

The door to R&D swung open, making both Billy and Goodnight’s heads snap up, Billy’s hands freezing mid-drawer pull. The dread in his gut solidified when a fully armed security team came through the entrance instead of a chemical spill response team. How in the hell a security crew knew exactly where to find them after all the precautions they’d taken, Billy didn’t know, but right now he was looking at a crew of six, all outfitted for a serious fight. Billy wasn’t an encyclopedia of cybernetic mods, but he could recognize most of the combat-enhancing modifications on sight. He’d spent his first career with a small army of guys who had them working for him. Every one of this bunch had at least one that he could see on a very quick evaluation.

Of all the times Billy liked being right, this wasn’t one of them.

That was a Kerat Viper on the big bald man - a poison blade that ran down the chopping edge of the right hand. The woman with the electric-violet iris implants had the same wrist-mounted launcher that Billy did, the Lockheed Assassin. Strength mods on both the men in front of her - Billy could see the weave of metal in and out of their arms. The short one with the green hair grinned, and Billy saw that he had a mouth full of sharp, shining metal shark teeth. Finally, there was the one in back, with the entirely metal arms of the GeneCorp Hammer.

So… this was going to be fun, clearly.

“Get down!” Billy shouted to Goodnight, and fired both his wrist launchers at once. The two men with the strength mods went down in meaty thumps: his last somnaline dart for the one on the left, and a blade straight into the throat of the one on the right. Billy didn’t know how this crew knew to come find them, but he knew GeneCorp policy well enough to know that they would be fighting to kill. Corporate security was a brutal thing these days, and becoming more so all the time - Billy couldn’t waste precious seconds on incapacitating them all non-lethally. Eliminating them swiftly and simply was the best Billy could do under the circumstancesl.

A blade came flying at his face, and Billy was grateful for the cybernetics that made him fast enough to duck under it and roll away even as it zipped so close he could feel the air it displaced tickling his cheek. Adrenaline was starting to pump through his veins, images and sound coming in sharper and clearer as he took in the opponents before him. He had successfully improved his odds by turning six on one to four on one. That still wasn’t ideal, but it was a start.

Billy stepped back slowly, eyes narrowed as he sized up the situation. His opponents were clearly doing the same. He breathed slowly, ignoring the blaring chemical spill alarm, forcing his mind to nothing - this was his playing field, this was what he trained himself to do for so long. Approach the fight methodically, take a defensive position. This was another sort of situation where his “never let them see you sweat” policy came in handy. For just a second, he gave himself a moment to hope Goodnight was successfully staying out of the way - it seemed fairly obvious that the man was no fighter, and he’d much prefer for them both to leave this building breathing.

Billy pushed fear and anger away, taking in both his opponents and the room and its resources with a sense of detached observation. Feelings were for people who made it out alive.

Then all at once, the room seemed to abruptly end the split second of a standstill - Lady Assassin fired another blade just as Shark-Teeth came charging in with a furious roar. In the span of a single heartbeat Billy used Shark-Teeth’s momentum against him, grabbing him with the claws and throwing him into the flying blade even as Billy dodged it, dropping and rolling aside. To Billy’s disappointment, the blade only caught Shark-Teeth in the arm - painful enough to make him snarl and hiss, but not enough to put him down, which meant Billy now had a razor-sharp problem gnashing toward him at top speed.

He acted quickly, stepping back, grabbing the head-height drawer on a tall metal file cabinet and yanking it forward at the last second. It came too fast for Shark-Teeth to react; he bashed his face into the steel full force, impact hard enough to embed the edge of the drawer in the right side of his fact, blood spurting and spittle flying as he screeched. He wasn’t dead, but he was down for the count, screaming and trying to hold his eye in its socket.

Billy only took a half-second to make sure the man stayed down before he dove under a lab table and slid across the tile floor, putting some distance between him and the others. He had three down, and three to go, and putting the last ones down would be a hell of a lot easier if he could see them. At the very least, they were fighting like a group of individuals and not like a team. Billy never stood for that kind of glory-hogging bullshit from his people back when he’d been in this business, but clearly GeneCorp’s Physical Security Chief wasn’t on his level. Good.

Billy peered up just in time to see Metal Gorilla advancing on him, a veritable brick wall of muscle and metal. He dodged in time to miss the first blow - a heavy punch that lacked grace but had enough heft that Billy could feel it barely miss his temple - and ducked to the side, pulling his arm to aim the Lockheed Assassin right at Metal Gorilla’s throat.

But then Billy saw a glint. Just a flash of metal, for a fraction of a second, and in a moment that felt like slow motion Billy saw Lady Assassin aiming to take another shot - but not at him. His eyes traced her trajectory towards the other side of the room, at an upended work table. The work table that was covering Goodnight. Billy saw her prepare to fire and felt his blood run cold. Whatever he did, he was not leaving here without Goodnight. That was a term non-negotiable.

In that freeze-frame of a moment, Billy made his decision, and shot his own blade launcher at Lady Assassin.

Time seemed to finally catch up at full speed as the blade flew in the span of a blink - not burying itself right between her second and third ribs and straight through her heart as Billy intended, but at least successfully throwing her aim off. She had some kind of armor in her long blue jacket that was strong enough to keep Billy’s blade from going through her, but at least the impact was enough to send her blade into Goodnight’s shoulder instead of his throat. Judging by the way Goodnight was now cursing up a storm in a mix of French and English it must’ve hurt like hell, but he was still alive, and that was the important thing. Everything else could be fixed, and Billy still had other things that required his attention right now.

Like, for instance, the concussion Billy got from Metal Gorilla’s fist colliding with his jaw as Billy’s redirected focus gave the guy the opening he needed to break Billy’s defense. Billy’s reinforced musculoskeletal system protected him from the broken jaw that would have given anyone else, but the impact still sent Billy reeling more than a few steps backwards; ears ringing, room spinning, white spots dancing behind eyelids. The follow-up punch to his sternum knocked the wind out of him; Billy felt his body scream with the ache to double over, his whole chest feeling like it had caved in on itself. When Billy managed to glance up, Metal Gorilla was smirking. He probably thought he was winning.

Then Billy’s hand shot up to extend his claws five centimeters into the Gorilla’s throat, and it became very clear that he was not.

Billy sucked up the agony in his chest as he ducked another flying blade, dropping Metal Gorilla and his crushed trachea to the ground as he jumped up on a table and sprinted across a few more with blood dripping from his hand. There were only two left: Lady Assassin and the Viper, the latter coming after him now and probably the more dangerous of the two.

But Lady Assassin was the one who’d gone after Goodnight. He’d seen her blade aim for Goodnight’s throat, and even though he stopped it, Billy had always been a man who held grudges. Thus far she’d been relying entirely on her blade launchers, so Billy elected to move into her space. Getting in close without an exit plan was stupid. The Metal Gorilla was a prime example of that; Billy was once again sniffing dismissively at GeneCorp’s Security Chief for not training amateur habits like that out of his people. But unlike Metal Gorilla, Billy did have an exit plan, and the reflexes and speed to enact it if necessary. If Lady Assassin had any surprises for him, he’d be ready.

He launched himself at her like a gunshot, ready to rip her throat out and feed it to her until she threw a hard side kick into his chest, intending to throw him off-balance and sending him back, heels skidding across the floor. Billy glanced up. She smirked. Her surprise, it seemed, was hand-to-hand martial arts training. She must have some kind of speed mods, too, Billy realized - he charged back up at her, she ducked and followed him with the heel of her hand driving into his back; he dropped out of that and fired a blade at her, she was fast enough to dodge it.

Everyone had a weakness, though. Billy kept pressing forward, looking for a hole in Lady Assassin’s defenses as she blocked or rolled off every blow. All the while, he kept track of the Viper in his peripheral: the man hanging at the edge of the fight, fully focused on them and wound as tight as a coil ready to spring. Right now, the Viper’s primary strength was working against him: his blade was coated in a powerful neurotoxin that would kill anyone it touched in seconds. With his last remaining comrade locked in close combat with Billy, he didn’t dare come in there with poison. He was as likely to kill Lady Assassin as he was to kill Billy if he tried it. Billy wasn’t stupid enough to dismiss him though - as soon as Lady Assassin was out of the fight, Viper would be on Billy like a cannon - but he could at least focus on her first.

Billy kept his eyes sharp and his reflexes sharper, mind honed on nothing but taking her down as he kept at her. But by the way her own eyes were locked onto his, she was doing the same. For every breakneck snap of a punch, she dodged almost fast enough to leave an afterimage; for every whipcrack snap of a kick, Billy ducked with enough swiftness to made sure she only hit air. They were well-matched for speed, both skilled fighters, and both determined to win. They traded blow after blow, a localized hurricane of speed and impact, neither of them managing a solid enough hit to do real damage. This fight would just be a matter of who made a mistake first.

But Billy Rocks didn’t make mistakes. And for all that his chest felt like fire and he tasted copper on his teeth and tongue, he kept at her relentlessly, a neverending fury of blows that made sure she only had eyes on him. All her focus, all her senses, trained on nothing but Billy - a deadly and admirable trait up until he saw her eyes widen as her back hit the wall. He managed to back her into a corner and leave her nowhere to go. It only took that one brief second of confusion, that one breath of realization, and one clawed swipe to her jugular to leave her bleeding out on the floor.

One left. Billy spun around, blood of at least three people sprayed across his body as he faced the Viper, who was coming at him with his poison razor ready to kill. There was truly no room for mistakes here; the Viper didn’t even need to land a good hit. All he had to do was break skin, and seconds later Billy would be paralyzed by the poison and dead soon after.

Billy’s mind raced as the Viper moved from a walk to a sprint. His best bet would be putting some distance between them. Given the Viper’s choice of cybernetics, he was most likely to be a close-quarters fighter, and if the Viper was smart enough to keep track of how many blades Billy had fired, he’d know that Billy was out of ammunition and would hopefully assume Billy wasn’t dangerous at range anymore. Billy just had to create that distance - backing Lady Assassin into a corner meant that Billy was now in the corner, and he needed a way around his much larger opponent.

A wall to his right and a stack of servers to his left meant those options were both closed. With that in mind and the Viper gaining on him at breakneck speed, Billy shifted back to defensive mode - he couldn’t run like this without getting immediately caged in and killed. His only option was to wait for the Viper to come in for the strike and hopefully dodge before the Viper could turn around to swipe at him.

Time seemed to speed and slow by the nanoseconds as the Viper came rushing in. Ten feet, eight feet, five feet, and then so close Billy could see the reflection in his pupils as he went in for the kill - and as soon as he did, Billy grabbed onto the Viper’s arm and pulled hard, hauling him forward and down while Billy leapt up and used the back of the Viper’s shoulder as a jumping-off point. Billy leapt, punching his heels down as he did, putting the Viper off-balance and Billy a good five meters away.

The Viper was understandably pissed off by that. He whipped around to face Billy, eyes bright and angry, roaring with rage - until that cut off abruptly with a sharp wet sound as Billy’s binyeo embedded itself in the Viper’s windpipe.

The Viper stared at Billy in his last moments, eyes wide and almost confused. And then he collapsed, leaving Billy to stand alone amidst the chaos, catching his breath and taking a look over his opponents. They were all indeed completely down - the only two left breathing were unconscious still, and the rest were staining the floor with growing pools of blood. Billy breathed in, and then back out. And then he retrieved his binyeo from the Viper’s throat, heartbeat still deafening in his ears, only snapping back around when he heard Goodnight groaning and pulling himself up. Right. Fuck, Goodnight was still here.

“How bad is it?” Billy asked as he rushed over, his worry obvious, getting close enough to hear over the alarm. He hadn’t had time to worry while he was fighting, but now he did, riding on the back of the adrenaline in his veins and washing over him.

“Well, mon cher, it is a very sharp knife stuck in my shoulder,” Goodnight drawled, wincing. “It hurts like hatred of the devil himself. But it doesn’t seem to have hit anything I can’t live without, so thank you for that.”

Billy didn’t like the sound of any of that, but he could see that Goodnight was right - the blade was sticking out of the joint of his shoulder, a nice safe distance from heart and lungs. Hard work to repair, no doubt, but repairable. “Don’t--”

“Don’t pull it out, I know,” Goodnight said with a grimace. Then he stopped trying to move, eyes closed as he kept still and breathed slowly - until he glanced at Billy again, this time with a wide smile and eyes that looked more in… awe, than anything else. It almost made Billy pause. “You, though - you were a goddamn force of nature. Congratulations on taking out their Physical Security Chief.”

“Did I?” Billy blinked, surprised. Not one of those people would have been a match for him one on one, but the security chief was among them?

While his opinion of GeneCorp’s security continued to plummet, he swiped a rag from a nearby board’s eraser tray and came over to kneel beside Goodnight. “Hold still,” Billy said, and began very carefully wrapping the rag around the blade to stabilize it.

“Joma Dumlao,” Goodnight said. “The big fella with the hand blade.” He seemed to be very deliberately measuring his breathing, and Billy could only assume that the continued talk was a way for Goodnight to distract himself.

“Huh.” Billy hadn’t expected that, but it was certainly handy. He thought he’d have to go hunting down all the people his employer wanted dead. “That will be one off Keiko’s list, then.”

Now it was Goodnight’s turn to look surprised. “You’re working for Shimazaki Keiko?”

Billy should have figured that Goodnight would know who he was talking about. Keiko wasn’t an uncommon name in Mariana, but in the Phos, there was really only one - especially once that narrowed down to a Keiko who was very comfortable with murder. They were already in this job and halfway through the actual mission - what was Goodnight going to do, turn around and walk away? He might as well confirm it. “Yeah.”

Goodnight snorted, and then winced at how that made the blade move in his shoulder. “You are definitely getting paid more for this than I am.”

“Probably,” Billy admitted. “But she will also definitely have me killed if I fail.”

“Ah, the neverending quest to balance the scales between risk and reward,” Goodnight mused. Once Billy finished securing the rag, Goodnight sighed and looked down at his shoulder, then back over at Billy. He might have said more, but the chemical spill alarm abruptly stopped - they both knew that meant they were running out of time. “All right. They know we’re here, and they’re gonna be wonderin’ why their security folks haven’t gotten back yet, so let’s find what we’re looking for and get the hell out of here.”

“Agreed.” Billy nodded firmly. There was nothing he would like more than getting their shit and then getting the hell out. Immediately following that, he wanted to get Goodnight to medical attention, or at least as close to real medical attention as they could get. They couldn’t exactly walk into Gisaku Memorial Hospital and say ‘pardon, this man was stabbed while doing crimes, please help.’ Vasquez’s roommate/brother-from-another-mother was a decent medic, though, and ought to be awake and in hearing range of his tablet by this time of day.

In the meantime, they still had a job to do. They continued where they left off, working as fast as they were able: unrelated documents and cabinets yanked and ditched, boxes pried apart, locked steel compartments forced open. They hadn’t gotten this far to fail in their tasks now. Goodnight still had to grab whatever important files his employer left behind here, and Billy still had to get the little green flash drive -

“Hah!”

\- that was currently in Goodnight’s hand. What?

Billy stared, frozen from where he turned to look at the sound of Goodnight’s voice. The man was holding up the all-too-familiar flash drive with his good arm, the tiny locked metal compartment before him pried open and empty. Goodnight himself was grinning through the pain; his joy a direct contrast to the growing dread in Billy’s stomach. “Hello there, my little AC-94-21-T! Let’s go save the world.”

And there it was. That confirmed it. With a sinking sense of shock, Billy realized the drive was the ‘documents’ Goodnight was looking for - the exact same drive that held the cure that Keiko had sent Billy for. Goodnight had just cheerfully read off its serial number. This was exactly what they were both trying to avoid when they started this partnership, and here they were still. Billy could barely believe it.

“Fuck.” Billy realized he needed to explain, and they didn’t have much time. He went over and gripped Goodnight’s good shoulder, making the man pause and look at him. “We came here for the same thing, Goody.”

Dismay showed on Goodnight’s face. He glanced at the flash drive, then back at Billy, and then over again another time. The dread was clear on his face - but only for a second, and then he quickly shook his head. “Merde - Okay, that’s fine, let me just see if I can copy it to my wristdrive.” His Google Eye lit up, scanning the device. Billy, against his ingrained nature, hoped for some kind of technological miracle, only to have that hope dashed by another round of cursing from Goodnight.

“What?” Billy could tell Goodnight was bothered by what he found, but he didn’t know why. “Goody, what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s fucking trapped,” Goodnight snarled, glaring at the flash drive like it personally offended him. “Of course it is. It’s - I - You know what? Here--”

Goodnight closed the last few steps between them and thrust the drive into Billy’s hand. Billy could only stare, frozen, dumbfounded and shocked as Goodnight looked up at him with a fierce new determination in those blue eyes. Billy couldn’t even begin to think of what to do, what to say. Despite what the warm, genuinely kind sort of person he’d discovered Goodnight was over the last little while, this was bigger than that. This was huge. He didn’t know what kind of payout Goodnight had coming, but he knew what Goodnight needed the money for. He couldn’t just take that away. “Goody, I…”

“There’s always another job,” Goodnight said firmly, and folded Billy’s fingers around the drive.

“But you -”

“Respite from a few headaches ain’t worth your death, mon cher, and my employer’s a lot more forgiving of me coming back empty-handed.” Goodnight squeezed Billy’s closed fist, meeting Billy’s eyes in a resolute, steadfast look that obliterated whatever arguments Billy had in his throat. “This thing’s trapped with a fast-acting version of CDD. Don’t let anybody put it in any kind of wetdrive, or even anything that connects to a wetdrive. Now let’s get out of here.”

Billy kept his gaze on Goodnight’s for one last moment, before he finally nodded and secured the drive. He’d take the drive back to Keiko, and then find Goodnight again. There was no time to discuss it here, but he was going to make sure Goodnight got the money he needed to get his cybernetics fixed. Whatever money he got from this, Billy would share it, because Goodnight had fucking earned it.

“Come on, we’re going out the window,” Billy said. “Do you have a medic, or should I call mine for you?”

Goodnight winced, and Billy couldn’t tell if he was more dismayed by his pain, his monetary loss, or the fact that he was going out the window instead of walking neatly out the door as planned. “Better call yours,” he said. “Sam’s in Atlantis for the rest of the month.”

Billy went to the window to cut through the glass with his claws; the sound was awful, but it was an easy process with blades like his. “Sam Chisolm?” he asked. He only knew one Sam who was a capable medic and currently in Atlantis; apparently Goodnight had been right about their circles overlapping. With Goodnight losing blood, Billy wanted to keep him talking, just to give him some idea how Goodnight was doing. “I know him.”

“Everybody knows Chisolm,” Goodnight said, chuckling as he slumped against the wall. “But me better than most. He’s been my best friend the last ten years or so. Same one that broke me out of that VR trap before it dissolved my mind.”

“He is a good man.” Billy had worked with the former police captain on a few occasions; there was no one better for getting information, especially if you wanted information on people. He had contacts at every level of the city, and he seemed to maintain them all just by being an all-around decent person.

“‘Bout the best there is,” Goodnight replied, wry smile fading as Billy pushed the glass out and stepped over, taking his hoodie off to create an impromptu harness for Goodnight.

“Don’t trust your ability to hold on to me right now,” Billy said, his tone apologetic. He knelt to loop the sleeves around each of Goodnight’s legs, struck with the involuntary thought that this was really not how he had envisioned either tying Goodnight up or kneeling in front of him. There was far too much blood and terror involved, and at least four more dead bodies than he would want in the room.

“For that I cannot blame you,” Goodnight sighed. “At the moment, I would not trust myself to do…anything, really, except maybe pass out.”

“Just hold on a little longer.” Billy pulled his minitablet from his pocket and tapped over into his contacts to take the extremely unusual action of making a voice call. Generally he communicated via text, but he didn’t have time for typing now.

“Josh Faraday here, what can I do ya for?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Extraction,” Billy said. “Roof of GeneCorp HQ, as fast as you can get here. My partner’s injured.”

“Billy? What the - GeneCorp, are you fuckin’ insane?! Shit, okay, running out the door now -”

Billy didn’t bother with goodbyes - he clicked off his minitablet and stowed it, and then put his arm around Goodnight’s waist to tug him over to the hole in the glass. He tied the makeshift harness to his belt, and then Billy leaned out the window and fired his zipline to the top of the building, another hundred and fifty stories up. Heights like that were why he had a laser zipline; it had essentially infinite length and strength, and Billy always liked to be prepared for a worst-case scenario.

With a tug, they shot off; Goodnight whimpered faintly as the zipline hauled them up together. Possible it was from pain or from lack of experience with flying up the sides of buildings. Billy usually loved this part - something about soaring through the air at high speeds, wind whipping through his hair and city lights a neon blur around him. A part of him wished Goodnight shared the same feelings about it; most of him just wished this experience as a whole wasn’t soured by the recent revelation and the blood on Billy’s hands. The zipline got them to the rooftop fast, though, so at least they had that going for them. No one had beaten them there, either. Apparently GeneCorp had been very confident in their security team’s ability to shut Billy and Goodnight down in R&D.

As they got onto the roof, Billy first untied the sweater harness, then got his shoulder under Goodnight’s good arm and walked him over to a wall he could lean against. When he let Goodnight go, there were bloodstains on his clothes; a mix of Billy’s kills and the blade lodged in Goodnight’s shoulder. It was a look that didn’t fit Goodnight at all, and that made Billy frown in general unhappiness over the entire situation. Not a lot he could do about it right now, though, except make sure Goodnight would get the medical help he needed.

“Faraday will be here soon,” Billy said. “He is annoying, but he will take care of you. He owes me.”

“Merci beaucoup, mon cher,” Goodnight replied. He was starting to sound sleepy, which Billy didn’t like. Blood had soaked through the rag he’d wrapped around the blade, and Billy didn’t like that, either. He devoutly hoped that Faraday was doing his usual maniac driving on that zipper bike, because there was definitely not much time to lose now. He didn’t think Goodnight was actually about to bleed out, but the man was definitely not in good shape.

Faraday must not have been at home when Billy called, because he and his bike came flying up the vertical street and onto the roof only a minute or two after Billy and Goodnight had gotten there. Billy never thought he’d see the day where he’d be genuinely grateful to see that ridiculous face pop up over a building’s edge - though then again, he never thought he’d see the day he’d meet someone quite like Goodnight either. Faraday’s bike whined to a halt as he brought it to hover right in front of the pair, and then his eyes widened as he hopped off it and saw who Billy had called him out for.

“Jesus wept, Billy! Your partner’s the Angel of Death?”

“I hate that name,” Goodnight groaned as Billy helped him onto the back of the bike.

“We can talk about it later,” Billy said, mostly to Josh. “Lockheed Assassin blade in his shoulder. You can deal with that?”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll take ‘im home and patch ‘im up. You got a way out of here?” Faraday asked as he mounted up in front.

Billy nodded. “Just a little more business to do first.”

Josh grinned and gave him a friendly little salute. “Have fun, don’t die, call us when you’re out.”

With that, Faraday peeled off the rooftop and took a sharp left before an equally sharp vertical drop took him out of Billy’s line of sight. With any luck, Goodnight wouldn’t survive the stab wound only to die of terror at Faraday’s driving. Hopefully Faraday’s body would at least provide some kind of crash protection in itself - for a dumb white boy who spent too much time meddling in people’s business instead of doing anything useful, Faraday was built like a brick fucking wall.

Billy would have liked to follow them. High speeds and stupid heights were sort of his thing. But that could come another day - he had a little more work to do.

* * * * *

“-- No, please!” Billy watched with mild amusement as the CEO of GeneCorp scrambled away from him. Billy supposed he couldn’t blame the man; not a lot of people could stay calm with a man like Billy standing in front of them, smattered in fresh blood still dripping down his claws. Which was a good thing. Smith deserved to be scared. How many people with CDD spent their last moments terrified, between the tremors and dementia? Smith could have stopped that at any time, but he didn’t, and now he would pay that debt with interest.

Smith was all the way against the glass wall now, looking for an exit and finding none. Billy watched him blubber. “Please, I have money. I have connections, drugs, weapons - I, I - Whatever you want, I can pay you, just--”

The binyeo found its last mark of the day, cutting off whatever plea or offer the CEO might have made with the sharp, wet sound of metal embedding itself in flesh and bone. Not that it mattered. Whatever it was, Billy wasn’t interested. All he wanted now was the return of his hair pin (easily done - he wiped the blood off on the CEO’s jacket and tucked it back in his hair) and to see that Goodnight was all right.

Billy stepped onto the CEO’s balcony and zipped down fifteen stories to a usable street, ducked down an alley where he abandoned his hoodie, took a few more zigzags to throw off anyone who might be interested in following him, and finally got himself to a Vertical Line tram station. He’d never felt so antsy on the ride downcity, and he was drumming his fingers on his knee rather than sitting in his usual stillness. He knew Faraday would take care of Goodnight - he’d patched Billy up enough times, at least once with an uglier injury than what Goody had now. (Shit, when had he started calling him Goody?) Faraday was a good medic. He’d taken some classes for it and everything. Goodnight would be just fine.

Even after that very encouraging internal pep talk, Billy was worried enough to sigh with audible relief as he walked into Vasquez and Faraday’s apartment to see Goodnight resting on their sofa with a clean white self-sealing bandage wrapped around his shoulder and a faint, woozy smile on his face. Not wearing a shirt, which Billy should probably have been enjoying less than he was given the circumstances.

“Billy!” Goodnight called cheerfully, eyes brightening and grin widening as Billy made his presence known. “Why didn’t you tell me you know Vas?”

Vasquez, sprawled on a chair next to the sofa like a very relaxed octopus, looked up at Billy too, huffing. “And why did you not tell me that Goodnight Robicheaux is even more chatty after painkillers?”

Before Billy could answer either question, Faraday piped in with another one from the kitchen. “And why didn’t either of you tell me that you both know the goddamn Angel of Death?!”

Goodnight groaned again and dropped his head dramatically against the back of the sofa. “I told you, I hate that name! It’s a bullshit hacker handle I picked when I was an 18-year-old drama queen script kiddie.”

“Who then became a fucking legend!” Faraday said pointedly. “Billy, you want a beer?”

“Not now,” Billy replied distractedly. He was so happy to see that Goodnight was none too worse for the wear that it was a little overwhelming. A smile was building on Billy’s face, entirely against his better judgment and despite the crime-and-blood-filled day he’d had, and he really would have loved to go over to that sofa, tuck himself in close to Goodnight, and stay there for the rest of the day. Could he do that? Or anything like that?

“C’mon and sit,” Goodnight said, beckoning him over with his good arm. So…apparently he could? Billy was too tired to pretend there wasn’t something hopeful lifting in his chest at the suggestion.

“Oh, hell no,” Faraday cut in. “I am not cleaning blood off that sofa again. You wanna sit, you can wash up and borrow some clothes from Vas first.”

All right, so maybe not just yet. A fair point, Billy had to admit. Cleaning upholstery was a pain in the ass, and blood was hard to get out of pretty much anything.

“It is a better idea than going back out looking like that, anyway,” Vasquez pointed out. He stood and gestured toward the short hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Come on, I’ll find you something to wear.”

The prospect of being clean did sound nice. So did the prospect of sitting down next to Goodnight without Faraday going on about his precious upholstery. With that in mind, Billy reluctantly left Goodnight for the second time that day and followed Vasquez as suggested.

As soon as he stepped into the shower, Billy was glad he had. The hot water felt glorious, allowing Billy to wash the day’s adrenaline and weariness down the drain along with the sweat and blood. Vasquez had nice shampoo and conditioner too, and he left the shower smelling like tropical fruit instead of blood and sweat. Vasquez was taller than Billy, so his sweatpants dragged the floor when Billy put them on and rode low on his hips, but the thin and faded gray waffle-knit shirt was a perfect fit once Billy pushed the sleeves up to his forearms. By the time he finished tying up the drawstring on his pants so they wouldn’t trip him, Billy felt significantly more human. Killing the security team and then assassinating GeneCorp’s CEO, COO, CFO, and two VPs felt like a different day entirely now that Billy was clean and comfy.

When he made his way back out the living room, Goodnight was still lounging on the sofa, now with one of Faraday’s flannel shirts worn open over the bandage. Broad as Faraday was, the shirt fit Goodnight like a blanket, but Billy actually thought that was kind of cute. Vasquez was back in his chair, with Faraday parked on a large beanbag and going on about his favorite holoprogram.

“You’ve never seen Bikini Death Race?!” Faraday asked, aghast.

Billy walked by him and sat down on the sofa, right next to Goodnight, who apparently didn’t even know that there was any such thing as a Bikini Death Race.

“You really don’t want to know,” Vasquez said with a sigh. “I watch it with him every Thursday because it makes him so happy, but every time I watch it, I actually feel myself slowly becoming stupider.”

Billy should probably care if Vasquez was getting stupider. Vasquez was his fixer, his go-to guy for any weird thing he needed for a job. If he got stupider, that could spell real trouble for Billy. But Goodnight Robicheaux was tipping over to rest his head on Billy’s shoulder in his painkiller haze, warm and solid and hair smelling like the same tropical shampoo Billy had also just used in Vasquez’s bathroom - and Billy found that he didn’t really care about much other than that.

“Pretty sure the same thing happens when I watch your Abismo de Amor, so don’t get too far up on that high horse, buddy,” Faraday said.

Faraday getting stupider would probably be a problem for Billy, too, since he was always the one Billy would call when Billy needed a medic. But now Goodnight had hooked his arm through Billy’s and was nestled into his side, so really, Faraday could watch melodramatic holonovelas and get stupider every day, and that was fine. Goodnight yawned and his pretty blue eyes fluttered closed, and through the warmth spreading from his chest to the rest of his body Billy considered that a nap actually did sound good.

He glanced up to ask Vasquez if there would be any problem with them conking out on the sofa for a little while, only to find that Vasquez and Faraday had paused their good-natured argument to grin like fools at Billy sitting there with Goodnight cozied up to him.

“You can both go fuck yourselves,” Billy said, and closed his eyes to go to sleep.

* * * * *

Billy woke up from his nap, and instantly hated the fact that he had to leave.

The room was darker than it was when he fell asleep, and quieter. It took a solid few seconds before Billy realized that Faraday and Vasquez weren’t gone; he could make out their voices in the kitchen, arguing, as they did basically every other moment. They probably dimmed the lights for him and Goodnight, which was nice.

The only thing nicer than that was the solid warmth in his arms; Goodnight, tucked under his chin, cheek against Billy’s collarbone, ashy lashes still shut as he slept. Billy swallowed hard at the sight. Goodnight’s hair was slightly mussed, his good arm still wrapped around Billy’s. When Goodnight breathed, Billy could feel it - every inhale and exhale, the faint rhythm of Goodnight’s heartbeat against Billy’s arm. To think, he could have lost that today. To think that even after the clusterfuck that was this morning - and a large part of Billy’s life, honestly - Billy could still have this, this beautiful man in Billy’s arms that made him feel more core-shaking tenderness than anything else had in the past decade.

Billy felt his breathing hitch as Goodnight snuffled closer to Billy’s chest. The fondness in his heart felt like it was overflowing, liquid affection like melted sunlight pooling in his heart and his bones and Billy thought, very suddenly (but not at all surprisingly, which would’ve scared him if you’d told him so three weeks ago), that he could grow to love Goodnight. That maybe he’d already started.

That maybe he already did.

It was this, mostly, that finally got Billy to shift and get up. He didn’t know where this thing he had with Goodnight would go, whether this was only because of what they’d been through or whether they’d grow bored after all this was over - but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to find out without finishing up his mission, or without making sure Goodnight got the payment he fucking deserved.

And so Billy started moving to get out from under Goodnight - who stirred briefly, groaned, and then promptly fell back asleep. Billy indulged himself in one last moment of unfiltered affection, sweeping the hair away from Goodnight’s face and pressing his lips to Goodnight’s forehead. And then he popped by the kitchen, said his thanks and see-you-laters to Vasquez and Faraday, and made his way out to go meet Keiko.

Billy dropped by his apartment to put on his own clothes before going to meet her, getting her location from his secondary contact to her - crime lords didn’t always have time to answer their phones for people like Billy, anyway. The contact informed him she was holding a party at her house in the city center, one of the classy affairs where you might see the City Minister and various Council members or the top players of Mariana’s underworld, possibly both. Billy dressed appropriately - and by appropriately, he meant the sleeveless top, black trousers, and tactical boots that were his usual day-to-day clothing - and took the first ride he could get to the house. It wasn’t like he was actually attending the event himself anyway.

“Billy Rocks,” Billy informed the butler standing by the back entrance, “Ms. Shimazaki is expecting me.”

The butler bowed with the precise depth owed to a guest of his employer who was nonetheless not of the quality to be invited to the soiree going on inside and stepped back to allow Billy into the foyer. Billy was only left cooling his heels there for a moment; the butler quickly returned with one of Keiko’s security people, who silently guided Billy down the hall to the sparkling ballroom where the party was being held.

The light in the room was bright, but warm, coming from glittering chandeliers that hovered several feet above the guests with no visible means of support. The floor below them looked like an artist’s fantasy of the ocean, blues and greens shining and swirling under a clear top, reacting with ripples at each guest’s steps. Some kind of touchscreen floor, Billy had to guess; it fit in with the rest of the place, all of it designed to display the hostess’s wealth and power without being gauche or overdone.

The hostess’s dress for the evening was meant to do the same. Billy didn’t know clothing designers (Goodnight probably would, he thought) but he could still tell it was expensive. Floor-length, black, with tiny white diodes sewn in from the fitted bodice to the bottom of the full skirt making it look like the night sky come to life. A collar of light and feathers draped over Keiko’s neck and shoulders echoed the blue and purple hand-painted silk of her pretty redheaded companion’s off-the-shoulder gown.

More interesting to Billy was the young man chatting with the two of them: Billy recognized him. He’d seen him before. Not personally, but he knew that face - it was the one that had appeared on Goodnight’s holodisplay when his client had messaged about clothing and alarms in the R&D department. He knew Mariana was contained enough that everyone basically knew everyone else’s grandmother, but something about this particular coincidence made Billy straighten a little, even though he knew the man could just be some informant for Keiko for the CDD cure. If Billy recalled correctly, the man’s name was Teddy Q. The way Teddy’s jaw dropped when Billy held the drive out to Keiko solidified Billy’s assessment of his identity.

“Don’t plug it into any wetdrives,” Billy said as Keiko took the device from him, keeping tabs on Teddy Q in his peripheral but putting his focus back on her. “Or anything that connects to any kind of wetdrive, until you have it scrubbed.”

“Emma, what in the hell did you do?” Teddy Q hissed to the redhead.

“What do you mean?” The redhead, apparently Emma, crossed her arms.

“How did you even know there was—”

“Because you’ve got the OPSEC skills of a mola mola, Ted,” Emma sighed, while Keiko smiled, clearly pleased with herself.

Teddy looked deeply annoyed. “So you sent your fiancée after it without even involving me?”

“That was an insult, and I meant it,” Emma said with pointed emphasis. “I was trying to keep you from getting in any more trouble than you already were! And besides, I’m the one who’s actually personally affected by what’s on there, and Keiko knows a lot more people than you do—”

Teddy groaned, pushing his hand through his hair. “I had it handled! I found a hacker that was gonna do the job just fine, thank you very much!”

Billy, more interested in getting paid than listening to any more of what sounded like a squabble between siblings, had started tuning them out - up until that point. He knew he was still in public, under the gaze of one of Mariana’s biggest crime lords and her fiancée, but he couldn’t help the way his spine straightened and his gaze snapped towards them. He ignored the way Keiko was watching him, and interrupted calmly with,

“I believe your source of help is the man who helped me.”

The man called Teddy abruptly shut up, and then turned to meet Billy’s gaze, surprisingly only shrinking back a little bit at the intensity. “Wait, you mean Goodnight Ro—”

Emma’s elbow cut Teddy off. “This is what I mean when I say OPSEC skills of a mola mola, Teddy.”

Billy’s face remained impassive, despite finding the whole thing equal parts funny and frustrating. This entire clusterfuck of events was what got him to meet Goodnight - and also what could’ve gotten them both killed if they had hesitated any more than they had, figuring out who got to take the drive back. At least Billy knew for sure now what Goodnight meant by an employer much more forgiving about coming back empty-handed. He doubted this Teddy Q had it in him to swat a fly.

“Correct,” he said, turning his focus and his thoughts back to Keiko. “My associate scanned the drive. What you need is there. The news stations are probably reporting on the rest of your request by now.”

“All six?” Keiko asked, examining the drive.

“All six.”

Keiko smiled, clearly delighted with the results. It was a good look on her. “Come to the office with me,” she said. “I’ll confirm that, and then we can make the appropriate transfers.” She stepped over to Emma and kissed her cheek. “Excuse me just a moment, darling. I’ll be right back.”

Keiko and Billy left Emma and Teddy to continue their discussion, trailed by the same two giant blond bodyguards Keiko brought with her to the tea house. A silent journey through a series of hallways and one set of stairs led them to Keiko’s office, where she plugged the drive into a tablet that sat next to her desktop terminal. Scrubber machine, if Billy had to guess. Since CDD had first become a serious public health issue, cautious people had begun using scrubbers, computers that they never connected to their wrist drives and could process suspect files separately from the regular systems. It figured that Keiko was the cautious type. She was smart like that.

Billy remained quiet as he watched Keiko work. It was one of those things they liked about each other; Keiko nor Billy feeling the need to speak. They were not chatty people, and they were presently focused on business. But a question burned on Billy’s mind, and considering the job he’d just completed for her, he felt that he could push his luck, just a little.

Billy broke the silence. “Your fiancée--”

“Has CDD,” Keiko confirmed, anticipating the question. “And has the best treatment money can buy, but now she’s going to have a cure. And the people who would have let her suffer have paid for their mistake.” She looked up from the monitor with a smile that was less pleased than it was satisfied, and then turned to her other computer to begin tapping and swiping a series of commands. “Five hundred thousand chitons for the drive, and I’m adding an extra hundred thousand for each bag of trash you tossed into the incinerator,” she said. “That’s 1.1 million total, transferring to your account now. Please enjoy it as thoroughly as I will enjoy the results of your work.”

Billy pulled out his tablet to confirm, neutral poker face not allowing how very enthused he was about the figure to show. Not that he didn’t trust Keiko’s honor as a businesswoman - checking was just standard procedure. Only an amateur walked away from a job without checking on payment; it didn’t matter how prolific a crime lord was, anyone could still rip you off otherwise.

But there it was: 1.1 million chitons. Billy could feel the traitorously stubborn tendril of hope coil around him as he stared at the figure. The half million he’d been promised would have taken him most anywhere he wanted to go - this could literally have him set for life. He could finally leave this life - the blood, the shadows, the loneliness - behind. He could start again.

And he knew exactly the first thing he was going to do with the money.

Billy made his thanks and his goodbyes and set out into the night once more, pulse thrumming for an entirely different reason. He was just getting on the tram to the Phos when a message dinged on his minitablet.

Good evening, my knight in shining clawed armor. I have successfully reached home and now mean to take more medicine and sleep for another twelve hours.

Billy felt a giddy, uncontrollably stupid smile spread across his face, and quickly typed out his reply.

Good. Will come see you tmrw

* * * * *

The knock Goodnight had been waiting for came around 1030, an hour or so after he’d gotten himself up, washed, and dressed. It had been a rough night; using the Owl always did a number on him even if it didn’t give him a full-on migraine. Once you added a serious stab wound on top of that, that was a recipe for a real bad time. But Faraday’s stitching and bandaging had helped, and so had the drugs, as did some sleep, strong coffee, and breakfast.

He was perhaps not at his very best (especially now being out a hundred thousand chitons that he had really been looking forward to spending), but he was plenty ready to greet Billy with a smile. Not like it was hard; the moment he opened the door and met a familiar, painfully handsome face, his mouth just seemed to break into a grin all on its own. Only a man like Billy Rocks could come out of a day like yesterday looking like he’d just stepped out of a virtu-mag, and when his eyes and shoulders visibly softened just the slightest bit upon seeing Goodnight, it felt like a little bit like watching the sun rise.

“C’mon in,” Goodnight finally said after maybe half a heartbeat too long, embarrassed, stepping back to let Billy enter.

And rather than hello, how are you, may I have a cup of coffee, or anything of the kind, Billy stepped in and said, “I have a proposition.”

Goodnight’s embarrassed blush dissipated, replaced by a confused cock of his brow. “I told you, I’m too lazy for prostitution.”

“Not that kind.”

Too bad, Goodnight thought, and then waved for him to continue. “All right, well, as long as it’s not a shrimp-farming scheme, go on.”

And then Billy continued to surprise and confound Goodnight, suddenly meeting Goodnight’s eyes again in a startlingly intense gaze and saying, “Equal shares of my take from yesterday. We shared the work equally, and you gave up your reward for my life. And you were stabbed. It is only fair that we share my reward equally in turn. Fifty-fifty.”

Goodnight blinked dumbly at Billy. This was not what he was anticipating when Billy came by, to say the least. He’d thought Billy came to check in on him, maybe give him a status report on the job. Or - if he were being honest and stupidly optimistic - he’d hoped that Billy would’ve maybe, just maybe, dropped in to ask Goodnight out for dinner.

This? This was not dinner. This was much, much bigger than just dinner. He knew Billy Rocks was a good man - Billy had paid a high price for doing the right thing by ratting out his ex-employer - but a fifty-fifty split that he was in no way obligated to offer? That was a hell of a thing to do, especially in the cutthroat world of Mariana’s criminals. Besides, Goodnight had been honest when he thrust that flash drive into Billy’s palms; as disappointing as it was to lose the payout, at least Goodnight didn’t risk punishment by death for failing. He wasn’t going to drop dead from a few headaches. There were plenty of other things he could do to raise the money to get his operations - it would’ve just taken much longer, more tedious work.

“You’re serious?” Goodnight asked after a moment, eyes wide.

“Very,” Billy said, taking out his minitablet. “Is your account connected to the text number I have for you?”

“It, ah…yes. It is.” If Goodnight sounded as though he was reeling a bit from the offer, it was because he was. Then Billy swiped his hand across his minitablet a few times, and Goodnight’s palm unit dinged with a message. He opened it up. And then Goodnight’s eyes near popped out of his skull at his display. “Five hundred and fifty goddamn thousand?!”

Billy just grinned.

Goodnight stared at the display until he swore the numbers were burned into his retinas. 550,000 chitons. He felt like he was dreaming, but the numbers didn’t lie. He knew he probably looked stupid as hell, more than a little like a slapped flounder or something, but - shit.

“I knew you were getting paid more than me given who you were working for, but good god.” Goodnight shook his head and laughed, and then laughed louder, letting the sheer absurdity of it all wash over him before looking up at Billy with a sideways smile. “Thank you.”

“I could not have done it without you,” Billy said. “Or, I could not have done it so well or so easily. And I think the same is true of you, yes?”

“Yeah, any one of that security team could’ve done me in for sure if you hadn’t been there,” Goodnight replied, trying to move his injured shoulder and wincing at the reminder. “Guess we work pretty well together, huh? Maybe we can do it again sometime, keep up this equal shares thing.” That wasn’t even half of what Goodnight wanted, but it was a start.

“I think it will be a good deal for us,” Billy agreed. His grin had faded, but he still had a small smile on his face - a personal victory for Goodnight, and a memory committed. “Our skills match well, and we have similar planning styles. We can make more money together than either of us can on our own. And I will bring you pretzels.”

“You know, I’d be happy to bring you pretzels, too, if you needed them,” Goodnight replied with a little smile. He really would, or whatever little thing it was that would help Billy through a bad day. Everybody had something like that, Goodnight thought.

“I know,” Billy replied, giving him a small smile in return. “I might even let you.”

This, Goodnight could sense, was nearing a natural end to a conversation. He could see it play out: Billy shaking his head, telling him to keep in contact, and then going out the front door. It wasn’t a bad conclusion to a job as tremendous as this one that had ended with a knife in Goodnight’s shoulder. In fact, it was pretty goddamn good - Goodnight paid more than triple his starting salary, the fact he could finally get the stupid Owl out of his head, the chance to see Billy Rocks on a regular basis - he couldn’t ask for more.

Except, he realized, that he could. And he wanted to.

Neither Goodnight nor Billy was moving. Billy’s face was as expressively neutral as it ever was, but he still had that small uptick at the corner of his mouth, and his dark eyes were locked onto Goodnight’s. Almost like he was waiting. Waiting for Goodnight, who saw those dark eyes and that gorgeous mouth and thought;

Croissants and a cafe. Banh Mi scrawled on the side of a coffee cup. A sushi delivery outfit. The start of a partnership, with dumplings and vinegar.

He thought of Billy, and his wall of sea anemone, and the curve of light across the length of his spine. His wry smile and his dry sense of humour and his amusement at stupid names on fake badges. The glow of pink circuitpaint reflected in dark eyes, a childlike joy in petty vandalism, and the rescue from the sewer. Pretzels and a gentle, calloused touch on his face and cozy nap on a criminal’s sofa and a kiss to Goodnight’s forehead so small and delicate that Goodnight didn’t know if it was real or if he’d dreamt it.

Billy made conversation and laughing the most fun they’d been in a long time. He was witty and kind as he was strong and fast, with eyes and thoughts deep as the ocean they lived in. The closest thing to a human masterpiece Goodnight had ever seen.

Goodnight thought of all of that, and hesitated a second. Some part of his brain shouted about how sleeping with people he worked with was a bad idea, that this was just some fleeting fancy, that this would not end well.

And then something in Billy’s eyes flickered, body slightly turning as if to leave, and Goodnight promptly told that part of his brain to shut the hell up.

“-- What would you think about seeing each other sometime?” Goodnight blurted out, heat quickly rising up his neck as Billy paused, turning back towards Goodnight. “As in… non-professionally?”

“Personally, you mean?” Billy stepped forward, coming a little closer.

“Yes, that is the word for that,” Goodnight said, cursing himself for sounding like an idiot, face definitely turning red as the heat continued to rise to his ears. He could feel his Arctic Fox starting to whir, and he was probably about to sound even more like an idiot, but hey, Billy probably ought to know what he was getting into. “Yeah. Nothing to do with a job, just…go out for dumplings or coffee or something? Maybe even, I dunno, come back here and make out and see where it goes?”

For a moment, Goodnight wondered if he said too much. Maybe just the dumplings and coffee, maybe mentioning the rest was just overly, stupidly optimistic. Goodnight had half a mind to turn around and wham his head against the wall for not keeping his big, stupid mouth shut.

And then Billy took another step closer, put his hand at Goodnight’s waist, and effectively shut the thoughts down. “We already went for dumplings.”

“Mm. True.” Goodnight could barely say the words; his eyes were so wide, heart beating wildly in his throat, the hand on his waist quickly draining any intelligent thought he had left. His heart and brain were both racing, and his attempt to maintain something like calm and restraint had his cooling system whirring even harder. One look at Billy’s face - and Goodnight could hardly keep the giddy smile from crossing his face. In a decision of impulse, he draped his good arm over Billy’s shoulder, relishing the tension and the contact, pulse jackhammering through his veins.

“We also already had coffee,” Billy pointed out, starting to smile. The sight turned Goodnight’s wide, stupid smile into a wider, stupider grin. And then Billy’s other hand came to Goodnight’s waist as well, pulling him in close to playfully bump Goodnight’s nose with his. Goodnight’s heart might’ve exploded. He could’ve die happy, right there and then, with zero regrets. “So…what was next on your list?”

Goodnight remembered what was next on the list. Goodnight remembered exactly what was next on the list, and all it took to get there was a little turn of his head. Their lips met softly at first; then into gentle exploration; and then - as unhurried and leisurely as the artificial Mariana sunset, breaking soft golds over the city and all within it - morphed into something altogether more passionate, with Goodnight backing up toward the bed and dragging Billy along with him.

See where it goes, indeed.

* * * * *

Two years later…

“C’mon and lie down, cher.” Goodnight gave Billy a soft kiss on the cheek. It had been a long day for Rocks & Robicheaux, Security Consultants, but particularly for the Rocks half. What was supposed to be a simple training session for the Takahashi security force had instead turned into Billy leading them in a full-scale battle against a rival corporation’s team of mercenaries. That kind of direct corporate warfare was becoming more and more common, and while that meant that Billy and Goodnight could essentially work as much as they wanted to, it also meant spending some days worn all the way out.

At least now they had a home to come back to. They’d bought their house east of the city center a year before, abandoning their old shoebox flats in the Phos for something warm, bright, and spacious. They each still had their own home offices, but they shared the master bedroom, which was where Goodnight was currently steering his exhausted partner-in-all-things.

“Tea?” Goodnight asked as Billy flopped face first onto the bed. He was answered with a grunt that two years together had taught him to interpret as a yes. “I’ll put the water on, get you some ice and a pain hypo. Anything else you need?”

Billy turned his head, and despite being worn out and in pain, he smiled. “Just you.”

Two years together, and that smile still never failed to make Goodnight’s chest break warm and glowing, heart skipping a beat. Goodnight smiled back without even realizing, and leaned down over the bed to give Billy another light kiss. “Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be right back.”

It was good to be able to take care of Billy as much as Billy took care of him, Goodnight thought on his way to the kitchen. Getting the messed-up old cybernetics out had helped a lot, but he still got the migraines and hand tremors occasionally, and Billy was always there to make sure he was all right. When he had what they called a Bad Brain Day, one of the ones where Goodnight’s memories of the VR trap were too close and he didn’t feel like he was really piloting his own body, Billy was there to get him a soft blanket and watch old holos on the bed and make him feel grounded again. Goodnight might have felt like a burden to him, if not for days like this, when he could return the favor. If Billy pushed his speed and strength too far, Goodnight would be there with tea and ice packs and a warm body to rest against. If Billy’s own past demons surfaced for whatever reason, Goodnight could hold him and brush his hair and call to have dumplings delivered for dinner.

They didn’t have to be alone anymore. They made each other feel human again, on the days where they felt anything but. They made each other’s bad days better and their good days amazing. It made their personal relationship balance as well as their professional one did. Partners in everything, including life.

Equal shares, Billy had said at the beginning. Fifty-fifty. Goodnight had made a lot of decisions in his life, some of them extremely stupid - but as he went back with ice and hypo in hand, meeting Billy halfway for a kiss that turned into a smile, and then a laugh, he could say without a doubt: accepting that offer had been the very best of them.


End file.
